7 - Conclusion: Europeans, land and decolonization

Summary

What is a Nation?

… to get one's history wrong.

Ernest Renan

Africa,

don't let them

steal

your face or

take your circles

and make them squares.

Don L. Lee

This final chapter will attempt to summarize the study and integrate it into the overall process of decolonization in Kenya. European adaptation – the goals and composition of the groups, their alignments and divisions, their bargaining strategies and tactics – is discussed as an important feature of Kenyan decolonization. The land question was the key issue of the process. Its bargaining and resolution both paralleled and supported the larger process. One can argue that the explication of a major feature and critical issue of decolonization largely explains the direction the process took in Kenya.

EUROPEAN ADAPTATION

Groups, goals and strategies

As previously discussed, there was a dualistic division in the resident elite over the community's adaptive policies toward decolonization and the political ascendency of the nationalist elite.

The conservatives (or farmers) basically sought to reinforce the core group through a reaffirmation of traditional values. Their stance was reflected in a conservative view of a political grouping as quasi-organic, based on traditional ties. Opposition between colonial interests and the nationalists was seen as inevitable.