Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

The two great subjects of controversy in Kenya were concerned with the supply of labor and the problem of self-government, although less agitated problems, like agricultural technology, sanitation, and education were of vital significance. The whites tried to increase the pressure on natives to work on white farms rather than to seek to make a living on their own lands within the reserves, by forcing them to pay taxes in cash, by curtailing the size or quality of the reserves, by restricting improvements in native agricultural techniques, and by personal and political pressure and compulsion. The effort to use political compulsion reached a peak in 1919 and was stopped by Milner, although his group, like Rhodes in South Africa, was eager to make natives more industrious and more ambitious by any kinds of social, educational, or economic pressures. The settlers encouraged natives to live off the reserves in various ways: for example, by permitting them to settle as squatters on white estates in return for at least 180 days of work a year at the usual low wage rates. To help both black and white farmers, not only in Kenya but throughout the world, Milner created, as a research organization, an Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture at Trinidad in 1919.

As a consequence of various pressures which we have mentioned, notably the need to pay taxes which averaged, perhaps, one month’s wages a year and, in the aggregate, took from the natives a larger sum than that realized from the sale of native products, the percentage of adult males working off the reservations increased from about 35 percent in 1925 to over 80 percent in 1940. This had very deleterious effects on tribal life, family life, native morality, and family discipline, although it seems to have had beneficial effects on native health and general education.

The real crux of controversy before the Mau Mau uprising of 1948-1955 was the problem of self-government. Pointing to South Africa, the settlers in Kenya demanded self-rule which would allow them to enforce restrictions on nonwhites. A local colonial government was organized under the Colonial Office in 1906; as was usual in such cases it consisted of an appointive governor assisted by an appointed Executive Council and advised by a Legislative Council. The latter had, also as usual, a majority of officials and a minority of “unofficial” outsiders. Only in 1922 did the unofficial portion become elective, and only in 1949 did it become a majority of the whole body. The efforts to establish an elective element in the Legislative Council in 1919-192 3 resulted in violent controversy. The draft drawn by the council itself provided for only European members elected by a European electorate. Milner added two Indian members elected by a separate Indian electorate. In the resulting controversy the settlers sought to obtain their original plan, while London sought a single electoral roll restricted in size by educational and property qualifications but without mention of race. To resist this, the settlers organized a Vigilance Committee and planned to seize the colony, abduct the governor, and form a republic federated in some way with South Africa. From this controversy came eventually a compromise, the famous Kenya White Paper of 1923, and the appointment of Sir Edward Grigg as governor for the period of 1925-1931. The compromise gave Kenya a Legislative Council containing representatives of the imperial government, the white settlers, the Indians, the Arabs, and a white missionary to represent the blacks. Except for the settlers and Indians, most of these were nominated rather than elected, but by 1949, as the membership was enlarged, election was extended, and only the official and Negro members (4 out of 41) were nominated.

The Kenya White Paper of 1923 arose from a specific problem in a single colony, but remained the formal statement of imperial policy in tropical Africa. It said: “Primarily Kenya is an African territory, and His Majesty’s Government think it necessary definitely to record their considered opinion that the interests of the African natives must be paramount, and that if and when those interests and the interests of the immigrant races should conflict, the former should prevail. ... In the administration of Kenya His Majesty’s Government regard themselves as exercising a trust on behalf of the African population, and they are unable to delegate or share this trust, the object of which may be defined as the protection and advancement of the native races.”

As a result of these troubles in Kenya and the continued encroachment of white settlers on native reserves, Amery sent one of the most important members of Milner’s group to the colony as governor and commander in chief. This was Sir Edward Grigg (Lord Altrincham), who had been a member of Milner’s Kindergarten, an editor of The Round Table and of The Times (1903-1905, 1908-1913), a secretary to Lloyd George and to the Rhodes Trustees (1923-1925), and a prolific writer on British imperial, colonial, and foreign affairs. In Kenya he tried to protect native reserves while still forcing natives to develop habits of industry by steady work, to shift white attention from political to technical problems such as agriculture, and to work toward a consolidation of tropical Africa into a single territorial unit. He forced through the Colonial Legislature in 1930 the Native Land Trust Ordinance which guaranteed native reserves. But these reserves remained inadequate and were increasingly damaged by bad agricultural practices. Only in 1925 did any sustained effort to improve such practices by natives begin. About the same time efforts were made to extend the use of native courts, native advisory councils, and to train natives for an administrative service. All of these met slow, varied, and (on the whole) indifferent success, chiefly because of natives’ reluctance to cooperate and the natives’ growing suspicion of white men’s motives even when these whites were most eager to help. The chief cause of this growing suspicion (which in some cases reached a psychotic level) would seem to be the native’s insatiable hunger for religion and his conviction that the whites were hypocrites who taught a religion that they did not obey, were traitors to Christ’s teachings, and were using these to control the natives and to betray their interests, under cover of religious ideas which the whites themselves did not observe in practice.

INDIA TO 1926

In the decade 1910-1920, the two greatest problems to be faced in creating a Commonwealth of Nations were India and Ireland. There can be no doubt that India provided a puzzle infinitely more complex, as it was more remote and less clearly envisioned, than Ireland. When the British East India Company became the dominant power in India about the middle of the eighteenth century, the Mogul Empire was in the last stages of disintegration. Provincial rulers had only nominal titles, sufficient to bring them immense treasure in taxes and rents, but they generally lacked either the will or the strength to maintain order. The more vigorous tried to expand their domains at the expense of the more feeble, oppressing the peace-loving peasantry in the process, while all legal power was challenged by roaming upstart bands and plundering tribes. Of these willful tribes, the most important were the Marathas. These systematically devastated much of south-central India in the last half of the eighteenth century, forcing each village to buy temporary immunity from destruction, but steadily reducing the capacity of the countryside to meet their demands because of the trail of death and economic disorganization they left in their wake. By 1800 only one-fifth of the land in some areas was cultivated.

Although the East India Company was a commercial firm, primarily interested in profits, and thus reluctant to assume a political role in this chaotic countryside, it had to intervene again and again to restore order, replacing one nominal ruler by another and even taking over the government of those areas where it was more immediately concerned. In addition the cupidity of many of its employees led them to intervene as political powers in order to divert to their own pockets some of the fabulous wealth which they saw flowing by. For these two reasons the areas under company rule, although not contiguous, expanded steadily until by 1858 they covered three-fifths of the country. Outside the British areas were over five hundred princely domains, some no larger than a single village but others as extensive as some states of Europe. At this point, in 1857-1858, a sudden, violent insurrection of native forces, known as the Great Mutiny, resulted in the end of the Mogul Empire and of the East India Company, the British government taking over their political activities. From this flowed a number of important consequences. Annexation of native principalities ceased, leaving 562 outside British India, but under British protection and subject to British intervention to ensure good government; within British India itself, good government became increasingly dominant and commercial profit decreasingly so for the whole period 1858-1947; British political prestige rose to new heights from 1858 to 1890 and then began to dwindle, falling precipitously in 1919-1922.