7 - Nyanza at War: Kenya and the Mobilization of Britain's Colonial Empire

Summary

THE Second World War had a significant political and social impact on the British colony of Kenya. The 1941 propaganda film ‘War Comes to Kenya’ offered an almost idyllic portrayal of an imperial territory that had become a key strategic base and a centre for the production of food and raw materials. While white settlers joined the Kenya Regiment to help fight against the Axis forces in neighbouring Italian East Africa, their wives, daughters and native labour remained at home to run the all-important farms providing much needed supplies for the war effort. This was, in part, true, although the actual story of the military campaign was much more complicated, and the apparent calm and tranquillity of the home front was not quite as all-encompassing as was suggested. Kenya had, however, proven itself an excellent location to assemble and train military forces, and it acted as a major logistics centre, helping sustain the British Empire's second global conflict in less than thirty years.

This now important colonial territory was established formally in 1895 when the East African Protectorate was declared. This remained for more than twenty-five years until June 1920, when Kenya became a crown colony with a governor appointed to represent the monarch. At the beginning of the First World War there were estimated to be several million native Africans and nearly 20,000 Asians but fewer than 4000 Europeans living alongside them. At the time of the 1926 census, the first set of official figures showed there were in fact 12,529 Europeans in Kenya and 2.5 million Africans and, by the outbreak of the Second World War, the gap had widened considerably, with approximately 21,000 Europeans and nearly 4.5 million Africans. For the most part, white settlers came from the ‘gentlemanly stratum’, hence the description of the colony as ‘the officers’ mess’. For one Kikuyu chief it was ‘an island of white settlers surrounded by much larger African and Asiatic population groups’.