Kenya

Kenya is an ethnic and cultural melting pot. Its present population is the result of incursions of differing groups over the past 1500 years. Before AD 1000 East Africa was invaded by Nilotic clans from the north. The invaders, called Hima, were aristocratic pastoralists who introduced cattle herding and developed powerful kingdoms. Bantu and Masai Migrations Bantu invasions after the 14th century forced most of the Nilotes into Uganda, where they established new kingdoms, or into Tanzania, where, mixing with the Bantu, they became the Sukuma and Nyamwezi. In Kenya a similar process absorbed the Nilotic Luo into basic Bantu culture. The Bantu invaded Kenya by two routes. The Kamba and Kikuyu took the northerly way from west of the great lakes area and settled in the highlands. A more southerly route was followed by the Taita and other coastal Bantu. Both of these groups were organized into clans, with no centralized social or political institutions. No large, powerful Bantu kingdoms ever emerged in Kenya. Even the Kikuyu, the most numerous of the Bantu groups, remained a clan-based society. The soil in the uplands was fertile, and agriculture flourished there. The Bantu, using the terrain of the Great Rift Valley, particularly the valleys and hills of the highlands and the Aberdare Range, defended themselves from later invaders without being forced to fundamentally alter their political systems. Still another group of invaders came to Kenya in the 17th century from the region north of Lake Turkana. These were the Nilo-Hamitic Masai clans with their cattle herds. Scorning the uplands for the plains of central and southern Kenya, they clashed with the Bantu only on the frontiers. Their societies were also based on clans, and although the warrior, or muran, was a dominant figure, the Masai never had large armies. Like the Bantu, they presented few military problems to the Europeans who divided up East Africa in the 19th century. The Zenj States and the Portuguese After the 11th century, the coastal areas were dominated by traders and settlers from southern Arabia. They established the various Zenj city-states, so called because in Arabic the country was known as the land of the Zenj, or "black people." The most important of these settlements in Kenya were Malindi and Mombasa. The Muslim entrepreneurs were content to control the interior trade, and their cities became important ports in the Indian Ocean trade system. In time a composite Arabic-Bantu culture developed along the coast, exemplified by the hybrid Swahili language, which became the trading language of East Africa. Generally independent from one another, the Zenj states were from time to time dominated by powerful non-African maritime empires. One of these was the sultanate of Oman and Masqat, which for centuries vied with the Europeans for supremacy along the coast. The Portuguese, following Vasco da Gama's discovery of the sea route to India in 1498, attempted to monopolize all Indian Ocean trade, and for more than a century, despite native resistance, they dominated the Zenj states. Fort Jesus, a massive 16th-century fortress in Mombasa, stands as a memorial to their former power on the Kenya coast. After the Dutch and the English wrested the trade from the Portuguese early in the 17th century, however, the Zenj states regained their independence. The Omani Dynasty  In the early 19th century Sultan Sayyid Said of Oman conquered all the city-states north of Cape Delgado. Ruling over a commercial empire, he did not try to dominate the interior Bantu clans, and he eventually moved his capital to the island of Zanzibar in present-day Tanzania. The clove plantations on Zanzibar and oil-palm groves at Mombasa, developed by Said, needed a large labor force, and this need was met by the slave trade. Controlled from Mombasa and Zanzibar, this trade extended into Africa's interior as far as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, formerly Zaire). Swahili slavers sometimes raided weak Bantu clans, but they generally traded for slaves with the stronger African states. The cruelty of the slave trade brought revived European interest in Kenya. The British consul on Zanzibar took the lead in the anti-slave-trade movement. In return for guarantees of continued protection, the sultan, by the 1850s, had signed treaties limiting the scope of the trade. Finally, in 1873, fearing that the British would support a European takeover of his empire, Said's son, Barghash, agreed to abolition. British Rule The British consul from 1873 to 1886 was John Kirk, who advised Sultan Barghash to raise an army and annex most of eastern Kenya and Tanzania. Refusing this advice, the sultan was helpless in the face of European territorial imperialism. German imperialists led the way, and their claims were upheld at the Congress of Berlin. In 1886 the British recognized the German sphere of influence over coastal Tanganyika (part of present-day Tanzania), retaining the Kenya area for themselves. A further territorial division took place in 1890. For a time British interests in Kenya were maintained by the Imperial British East Africa Company, but in 1896 the British Foreign Office assumed direct control primarily because of the decision to build a railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria. British annexation was not seriously contested by any of the Bantu or Masai. In 1902 all Kenya became a dependency under the Colonial Office. It became the British base of operations in the protracted East African campaign against the Germans during World War I (1914-1918). The type of government established in Kenya was the crown colony system. The governor and the secretariat were appointed from London. Most Africans, however, continued to be ruled in some fashion by their own leaders under the general guidance of a British district officer. Tribal lands were guaranteed, but all unoccupied territory became crown land. Even before 1900 some white colonists had recognized the economic value of the highlands and had begun to settle the fertile lands adjacent to Nairobi. By the close of World War I more than 9000 Europeans were in Kenya, and much of the highlands had been reserved for continual white settlement. The government, claiming to be concerned with "native paramountcy," actually favored the white minority. African economics and politics were closely monitored at a time when the depression of the 1930s and an expanding population showed the inadequacy of the land reserved for the natives. The Kikuyu Revolt The Kikuyu, denied any major additions to their reserve and never reconciled to the loss of their original lands, began an agitation after World War II (1939-1945), which culminated in the Mau Mau Rebellion of the early 1950s. Although the rebellion did not spread to the other native peoples, it cost the lives of a few Europeans and thousands of Kikuyu, and the expenditure of millions of dollars. By the end of the emergency, in 1956, the prosettler policy was abandoned in favor of one similar to that being followed in West Africa, leading to majority rule and independence. The only difficulty in this period concerned Jomo Kenyatta, the Kikuyu leader, who had been imprisoned for complicity in the Mau Mau uprising. The major Kenya political party, the Kenya African National Union (KANU), refused to cooperate fully until their leader was released. Once this was done in 1961, full cooperation ensured Kenya's independence, which was proclaimed on December 12, 1963. Independence  Despite the fears of white settlers, African rule proved moderate, pro-Western, and progressive. Although Kenya by 1965 was a functioning one-party state, considerable freedom was permitted within the party, and the government seldom misused its powers. Internal peace among the different tribes and nations was maintained, and land redistribution calmed much of the clamor of Kenya's traditional leaders. Kenya became a republic in 1964, and Kenyatta was chosen its first president. He sought to maintain good relations with Kenya's neighbors but did have some difficulties with Tanzania and with the Ugandan regime of Idi Amin. The East African Community, an economic union of the three countries established in 1967 and once considered a promising start for political unification, was gradually phased out (although in the early 1980s the community's former members considered reviving it). Kenyatta's moderate, stable government attracted large foreign investments. A new industrial area was established near Thika, and central Nairobi was modernized. The tourist industry, based on Kenya's great national wildlife reserves, continued to thrive. Kenyatta was recognized at the time of his death in mid-1978 as Mzee, "the wise old one," not only by his own people but by a wide array of world leaders. Fears of possible civil war between Luo and Kikuyu groups when Kenyatta died proved unfounded, and his successor, Daniel arap Moi, followed the same moderate political and economic policies. However, in June 1982 he made Kenya officially a one-party state. Two months later an attempt by air force units to oust him was crushed by loyal troops. As the 1990s began, Moi reacted to rising domestic opposition by jailing his leading critics; in late 1991, however, he bowed to pressure from international aid donors by legalizing opposition parties. Kenya's first multiparty election in 26 years was held in December 1992. Moi won the election and began his fourth term as president in January 1993. After the 1992 election, Moi's government came under allegations of government corruption. In addition, strife developed between the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin, the ethnic group to which Moi belongs.