East Africa Protectorate
The East Africa Protectorate was placed under the charge of Sir Arthur Hardinge (who from 1896 had the title of commissioner), then British consul general in Zanzibar. IBEAC had several permanent posts on the route to Lake Victoria and Uganda that devolved to the control of the protectorate.
In reality, however, the protectorate at its inception had a reasonably firm grip only on the narrow coastal zone. Its control even there was brought into question almost immediately by a disputed succession in the powerful Mazrui family, which erupted into a revolt in 1895 against the claimant formerly backed by the IBEAC. Hardinge was forced finally to call for reinforcements from India before the rebellion was ended the following year. British control of the area was never seriously contested thereafter.
Within the next few years the East Africa Protectorate was divided into provinces (each under a resident commissioner), which were subdivided into districts administered by district officers. The district officer's task was a lonely one, and his functions varied, combining responsibility for political, legal, financial, and military affairs; law enforcement; economic development; and public works. On the coast, Islamic religious courts continued to have jurisdiction over matters involving the personal status of Muslims, but efforts to employ indigenous leaders in administrative capacities under a system of indirect rule proved generally unsuccessful in the long run. In 1902 the King's African Rifles (KAR) was formed to provide military security in the protectorate.
Since the early 1890s the British government had shown interest in the construction of a railroad from the coast to Uganda. After establishment of the Uganda Protectorate, the proposed railroad became of great strategic significance, and in 1895 responsibility for its building was assigned to the new East Africa Protectorate. Work began at Mombasa in December 1895, and the line reached the site of Nairobi in 1899. By the end of 1901 it extended to Kisumu on Lake Victoria and was opened to public traffic in 1902.
The principal obstacle to the advance of the railroad and the imposition of British control was expected to be the widely reputed ferocity of the Maasai. The British officer in charge of Fort Smith (present-day Kikuyu), an outpost bordering on Maasai territory, established a friendship with the chief Maasai leader in the region, however, by giving him support in a local conflict, and thereafter his people presented few problems to authorities there or to the progress of the railroad.
This left the British generally free to deal with other ethnic groups through whose territory the railroad ran. The sectional nature of Kikuyu and Kamba society favored the British effort to gain control in their territories. The stiffest resistance actually came from the Nandi, located in the Kenya Highlands to the west of Nakuru. A major military operation was conducted against them in 1895 and another in 1900. Nandi recalcitrance continued, however, and they were finally subdued only in 1905.
The imposition of British control was handled pragmatically during this early period. Some African leaders were extended special treatment to secure their friendship and support, and warring groups were played off against one another. Moreover, the indigenous peoples along the route of the railroad found the British stations useful places for trade and apparently equated the few white men running them with earlier traders from the coast whose operations had always been of a temporary nature.
The expansion of British control after completion of the railroad in Kenyan territory did not follow a grand design but was carried out essentially by the protectorate officials on the basis of their own analyses of local situations. Actions to protect friendly groups from attack, occasional expeditions against slaving (slavery was finally abolished in the protectorate in 1907), efforts to assist traders and caravans that went into unprotected territory, and various other measures gradually extended British control.
Such activities in central Kenya involving the Kikuyu brought the establishment of a new post at Nyeri in 1902. Within a few years, other Kikuyu groups and the Embu (in 1906) and Meru (in 1908) around Mount Kenya were subdued without London's prior approval. Farther west, control of the Kisii and other ethnic groups was attained generally by about the middle of the first decade, but submission of the last group, the Marakwet (a Kalenjin subgroup) did not occur until 1912.
The Somali, Oromo, and various Nilotic peoples of the northern part of the protectorate proved less tractable. A major expedition against the Ogaden Somali in 1900-19001 attained few tangible results, and little was accomplished in succeeding years beyond the establishment of a few outposts.
Construction of the railroad and establishment of the East Africa Protectorate had in large part been effected on strategic grounds. Neither operation was self-supporting, and the British government, although willing for a time to provide grants-in-aid, was pressing for action that would generate revenues in the protectorate adequate to cover local expenditures. Some senior British officials had envisioned colonization of the area by immigrants from the Indian subcontinent (locally called Asians) as a way to bring development, and at the start of the twentieth century the Foreign Office and the protectorate's commissioner, Sir Charles Eliot, supported Asian settlement.
Asian traders and entrepreneurs, long established in Zanzibar, already operated in Mombasa and other mainland towns. Moreover, during construction of the railroad, more than 30,000 laborers had been brought from India, some 7,000 of whom elected to remain in the territory under the terms of their contracts. As events developed, however, the possibility of an Asian settler's acquiring good agricultural land disappeared, and the existing Asian community and new immigrants turned mainly to the commercial field as shopkeepers and traders.
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