Colonial Kenya - European Settlement
The forbidding terrain lying beyond the coast and lack of knowledge of the interior had initially given Kenya the reputation among Europeans of being a barren land. During the 1890's, however, British officials, soldiers, and missionaries began reporting the temperate climatic conditons, fertility, and apparent emptiness of the highland region of western Kenya. This part of the country seemed ideal for white settlement and agricultural development using European methods.
In 1902 Eastern Province of Uganda Protectorate was transferred to the East Africa Protectorate. Primarily, the move was intended to place control of the railroad under one jurisdiction, but consideration appears also to have been given to bringing the uplands of Eastern Province, physiographically part of the Kenya Highlands complex, under a single administration for the purpose of encouraging European settlement there. The transfer included all land from the eastern escarpments of the southern and central Rift Valley westward to Lake Victoria and the northern Rift Valley and some territory to its west.
The decision to favor European settlement was made in 1902 after the policy received the backing of the Foreign Office, and the handful of European settlers in the protectorate persuaded Eliot to end his support for Asian colonization. At the time the entire European population numbered little more than 500, and fewer than 20 were actually engaged in farming. Some additional settlers arrived in 1903, among them Lord Delamere, a British nobleman who was to play a leading role in settler affairs during the next three decades, and the following year Eliot enunciated his so-called White Mans Country policy for the protectorate.
A number of Afrikaners recruited in South Africa, together with additional British arrivals, raised the European population to over 1,800 by 1906. By 1914 Europeans numbered over 5,400, about 3,000 of whom were considered permanent settlers. The total increased to more than 16,600 in early 1930, at which time the African population was estimated at over 2.9 million.
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