The rule of empires : those who built them, those who endured them, and why they always fall (63 page)

farms. Coming to the realization that the generation of Kikuyu growing up in their midst was essentially colonizing the white highlands,

the Kenyan authorities began a program of forced relocation that sent

tens of thousands people back to the already overcrowded reserves on

the premise that improved soil conservation would open more land

for them.

This entirely unrealistic assumption demonstrated the imperial regime’s commitment to favoring the interests of the European

minority over those of its African subjects. The settlers’ entrenched

privileges subjected the African population of Kenya to an unprecedentedly burdensome form of imperial subjecthood. Ancient

British

Kenya 323

Britons, medieval Iberians, early modern Andeans and Bengalis, and

perhaps even Napoleon’s Italian subjects would have recognized the

basic template of the new imperialism’s extractive policies. Imperial tribute took many forms throughout history, but its ultimate

origin was always subject labor. This remained the case in British

Kenya. What was really new about the Kenyan experience of empire

was the biologically determined racism of the new imperial regime.

Although earlier empires were equally, if not more, violent, they

did not see their subjects as fundamentally and irredeemably inferior. Romanization was an avenue to imperial citizenship, Iberians

converted to Islam, and at least some Andeans and Bengalis stood a

reasonable chance of blending into the imperial ruling class during

the early modern era. Indeed, even Napoleon held out the possibility of assimilation through
amalgame
. In the modern era, however,

Kenyans were permanently inferior and at the mercy of the politically connected settler class.

Few of the young Britons staffi ng the lowest levels of the imperial

administration in the interwar era were willing to stand up to the settlers, but at least they believed in the new imperialism’s civilizing rhetoric. Nevertheless, they still spent most of their time traveling about

their districts collecting taxes, recruiting labor, and supervising the

chiefs. Their superiors in Nairobi expected them to do little more than

maintain law and order while keeping revenue fl owing. Just as Napoleon measured his prefects by their ability to extract tribute, the Kenyan

district offi cer’s reputation turned on tax collection. Terence Gavaghan

was frank in his recollection of the unpleasant realities of wringing

wealth from a poor and marginalized peasantry. “In itself the extraction of cash, often at the cost of sale of small stock, from people in bare

subsistence, was unedifying and burdensome. It was also a tedious and

grubby task.”43 Gavaghan’s Roman, Umayyad, Spanish, and Napoleonic

peers would have agreed with these sentiments. Yet in the Kenyan case

tax collection generated embarrassingly small returns, and the real mission of Gavaghan and his colleagues was to drive Africans into the labor

market.

Under the principles of indirect rule, the day-to-day responsibility for imperial administration fell to the chiefs rather than district

offi cers. While it is tempting to view the Kenyan chiefs as the equivalents of the Andean
kurakas
, Bengali
zamindars
, and other earlier

imperial intermediaries, the “native authorities” in British Kenya

324 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

had far less power than their predecessors. Some had infl uence before

the conquest, but the vast majority were imperial functionaries who

drew their status from the Kenyan state. Many were ambitious men

who had made themselves useful to the IBEAC. Others were former enemies, such as Koitalel’s oldest son, Lelimo, who made their

peace with the new regime. But in all cases, the key qualifi cation

for being a chief was outward obedience and the ability to enforce

imperial policy. Although they claimed that “native custom” was the

basis of indirect rule, British offi cials often simply invented new traditions to justify investing their allies with chiefl y authority. Thus,

the Luhya paramount chief Mumia acquired a cloak with a grandly

embroidered fringe and a silver-topped baton as symbols of his offi ce.

These trappings fooled no one, and ultimately the chief’s day-to-day

power rested on the tribal police force and, by extension, the imperial

regime.

Like most imperial rulers, however, the Kenyan authorities were

actually poor patrons, and it was quite diffi cult to be a tribal chief.

The British expected their proxies to assist in tax collection, maintain order, produce labor, and stifl e political opposition. These were

unpopular measures, and the inherent weakness of the imperial state

meant that “native authorities” needed at least some measure of local

support to govern effectively. But the chief who tried to be too popular by protecting his constituents faced replacement. As a British

offi cial admitted: “Either they had to work in our interests and risk

unpopularity which in their un-natural position was fatal to them,

or they had to side with their people against us and thus become the

instruments of their subjects while they pretended to help us. Most

of them tried to do both and failed all around.”44

Those who managed this diffi cult balancing act reaped considerable

dividends. By the interwar era, the chiefs earned annual salaries of up

to eighteen hundred shillings at a time when an unskilled laborer

was lucky to make two hundred shillings in a year.45 Moreover, the

chiefs’ control of the native courts and tribal police created ample

opportunities for graft and corruption. They could also manipulate

young district offi cers, who rarely developed a conversational command of African languages. The chiefs further dominated the local

native councils that managed tribal fi nances in the most politically

active reserves. As virtual tyrants in their locations, with the privilege

of defi ning custom and tradition, they could punish rivals and claim

British

Kenya 325

what was supposedly communal tribal land for themselves. Many

Kikuyu chiefs used this land to grow cash crops and invested their

earnings in businesses and education for their children.

The Kenyan government’s insistence on treating Africans as

primitive tribesmen legitimized and masked the chiefs’ self-serving

individualism. Assuming that African identities were exclusively

collective, the imperial authorities would deal with Africans only as

members of tribal communities. Common Africans understandably

often found these designations limiting and oppressive, but the realities of the native reserve system meant that they had to accept their

tribal status to gain access to land. The imperial authorities pretended

that the reserves belonged collectively to the tribe and claimed that

private land tenure was a western innovation with no precedent in

native custom. In the 1920s, the Kenyan supreme court went so far as

to rule offi cially that the Kikuyu in particular had no individual land

rights. Arguing that privatization would create an exploitive landlord

class, fragment the most productive land, and encourage social confl ict, government offi cials repeatedly rejected petitions by wealthy

Kikuyu for title deeds.

Profoundly suspicious of any practice or institution that might

lead to “detribalization,” the Kenyan government discouraged class

formation and individualism. District offi cers and missionaries ridiculed Africans wearing western clothing, and the Education Department refused to let the mission schools teach in English on the

grounds that, as one Colonial Offi ce study put it, “tribal vernaculars”

strengthened “the moral sanctions that rest on tribal membership.”46

In other words, peasant farmers did not need English, and European

employers could use a simplifi ed form of Swahili (popularly known as

“ki-settler”), consisting largely of common objects and commands, to

communicate with African workers. The Kenyan education authorities further mandated that government and mission schools teach an

adapted curriculum that combined vocational training with tribal culture. They hoped that these measures would preserve the integrity of

an imagined classless tribal society.

This imperial fi ction was impractical and unsustainable given the

social and economic realities of the new imperialism. The primary purpose of the native reserve system was to produce cheap African labor,

not protect the viability of tribal society. The overcrowded Kikuyu

reserves became particularly tense in the interwar era as family and

326 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

clan members vied with each other to claim the most productive land.

The stakes in these contests were high. Those who could control land

and labor could produce lucrative cash crops for sale in nearby Nairobi or for export to the wider world via the railway. Although most

of these entrepreneurs were Christians, their wealth enabled them to

marry multiple wives. This meant that younger men, who could not

afford to marry, faced the prospect of perpetual bachelorhood. Some

worked for wealthy men, but the majority become labor migrants or

squatters.

Those Africans who ventured outside their home reserves entered

a world where Europeans enjoyed unquestioned preeminence and

privilege. Asserting that there were no racial distinctions in Kenya

law, the imperial regime claimed that the Europeans’ preeminence

in the colony stemmed from their superior civilization rather than

their race. This fatuous assertion allowed the settlers to use their control of the local legislative process to create a formidable system of

racial discrimination and segregation. Not only did this “colour bar”

make it illegal for Africans to live permanently in the cities and the

highlands, it also followed the American model of social segregation

by banning them from European hospitals, hotels, bars, schools, and

churches. The settlers even rejected the Carnegie Foundation’s offer

to build a free library in Nairobi because it would have been open to

Africans, albeit through a separate door.

The settlers’ nearly total dependence on cheap and plentiful subject labor made the colour bar supremely hypocritical. Real segregation would have bankrupted them and destroyed the greatest

perquisites of empire. In addition to tending the settlers’ crops and

building their cities and towns, Africans also looked after the settlers’

personal whims. By the end of the 1930s, there were more than eight

thousand African domestic servants in Nairobi alone. Under Kenyan

law these butlers, cooks, nurses, and nannies were the only natives

eligible for permanent residence in European areas, and most settler’ houses included extensive servant quarters. Western children

led such an exceedingly privileged life that the imperial authorities

actually became concerned that the boys would lapse into sloth and

degeneracy.

The settlers worried even more about how life in imperial Africa

would affect their wives and daughters. Imagining that western

women were the embodiment of civilization and virtue, they believed

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Kenya 327

that they needed constant protection, particularly from sexually rapacious native men. Most African household servants in Kenya were

male, which meant they were a source of both domestic comfort and

danger. Although they obsessed about this “black peril,” the settlers

would not give up the luxury of having Africans cook and clean for

them. These gendered racial biases placed an enormous burden on

western women to uphold the prestige of the settler class. Lord Cranworth cautioned that only the right kind of women who could learn

when it was the “right time to have a servant beaten” should settle in

Kenya, and any white woman caught in a voluntary “unlawful carnal

connection with a native” faced up to fi ve years in prison. Settler men

were informally exempt from the ban on cross-cultural sex. Although

the Colonial Offi ce circulars banned conjugal relations with Africans,

Terence Gavaghan’s immediate superiors suggested that he take a

mistress to help him polish his conversational Swahili. Too junior

to attract the attention of a settler’s daughter, he credited a series of

African women with tutoring him in the “intricacies of sex.”47

Gavaghan was free to indulge himself in the reserves, but Nairobi

was supposed to be a safe and segregated bastion for European women.

On paper, it was an exclusively white city, but this was never the

case. In 1926 its population of roughly thirty thousand was approximately 60 percent African, 30 percent South Asian, and only 10 percent European. The vast majority of the African population lived in

informal “villages” that the Nairobi municipal council refused to recognize as legitimate settlements. While these urban equivalents of

rural “locations” in the reserves lacked even the most basic amenities,

they offered refuge from taxation and the vagrancy laws that made

it illegal for Africans to live permanently in the city. They were also

good places to discuss politics, market produce from the reserves, and

fence goods stolen from settler houses because they were largely outside the authority of the chiefs, district offi cers, and police. Crime was