Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fine account of imperial land-theft, 11 April 2007
This is a fascinating account of imperial land-theft. The British Empire had recognised East Africa's highlands as Maasailand from the mid-19th century. But later, realising that the pastoralist Maasai owned Kenya's best land, in the Rift Valley, the Empire's rulers encouraged white settlers to carve the `White Highlands' from Maasai land.
Colonel Grogan, a leading settler, said, "We have stolen his land." Lord Lugard, Nigeria's first Governor, claimed, less honestly, "This area is uninhabited." Sir Charles Eliot, High Commissioner in British East Africa, wrote to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Lansdowne, "No doubt on platforms and in reports we declare that we have no intention of depriving natives of their lands, but this has never prevented us from taking whatever land we want ... Your Lordship has opened this Protectorate to white immigration and colonization, and I think it is well that, in confidential correspondence at least, we should face the undoubted issue - viz. that white mates black in a very few moves ... there can be no doubt that the Masai and many other tribes must go under."
The first forced move was in 1904-05. The British Liberal government then promised the Maasai that they could have Laikipia instead, an inviolable reserve, as Colonial Office Minister Winston Churchill assured the House of Commons. In 1911, the government broke its contract and moved the Maasai again, at gunpoint, to the Southern Maasai Reserve, far worse land.
In 1913, the Maasai went to court to try to win back part of their former land. British authorities systematically obstructed the law suit. In Kenya, as in all the British Empire's Protectorates, the inhabitants owed the government unlimited obedience, but as `foreign subjects' they had no rights, no access to the law. They were `protected', but not from the British Empire. The Maasai believed that the land would revert to them when the British left Kenya at independence, but even in its departure the Empire betrayed them.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
