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Africans and Agricultural Production in Colonial Kenya: The Myth of the War as a Watershed

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

David Anderson  and
David Throup
David Anderson
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
David Throup
Affiliation:
Magdalene College, Cambridge
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Abstract

This article examines the economic effects of the Second World War on African peasant producers in Kenya, and places the war years within the context of the colony's economic difficulties during the Depression. In the mid-1930s the Kenya government sought to encourage African production, particularly among the Kikuyu and Abaluhya, in order to bolster the fiscal base of the colonial state and to subsidize the survival of the settler farming community. Promotion of African agrarian production brought conflict with the settler farming sector, and generated a serious crisis in the political economy of Kenya. These antagonisms became sharper during the war, when, after the Japanese advance in S.E. Asia, the Allied war effort demanded greater production from Kenya's settler farmers. Assisted by high guaranteed prices, both settler and African production was able to expand during the war. Previous studies of the impact of the war in Kenya have underplayed the extent to which African producers were able to capitalise upon this economic boom. Easily able to by-pass official marketing channels, African peasants produced for the black market. By doing so during the mid-war drought and maize crisis of 1942–3, African producers were able to obtain very favourable prices. Emerging peasant households among the Kikuyu and Abaluhya were therefore economically strengthened by the circumstances of the war, as was the settler farming sector. Europeans and Africans in Kenya were set on a collision course, which was to culminate some seven years after the war in the Mau Mau rebellion.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , October 1985 , pp. 327 - 345
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

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31 PRO CO 852/650/19879/62 (1944), ‘Marketing of colonial produce – primary produce markets: note by Sir P. E. Mitchell’, passim; and PRO CO 852/650/19879/64 (1944 and 1945), ‘Marketing of colonial produce: future of agricultural prices’.

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36 KNA C&I 6/782, ‘Trading by Africans, 1946–50’, T. C. Colchester, Municipal African Affairs Officer, Nairobi, to G. M. Rennie, November 1944; KNA Ag 4/220, ‘Wattle rules and marketing, 1942–46’; and KNA Ag 4/381, ‘Kiambu Monthly Agricultural Reports, 1940–49’.

37 KNA DC/NYI 1/4, ‘Nyeri Annual Report, 1944’, Appendix D. In 1941 only 19,000 bags of beans and only 2,000 lb of potatoes were officially marketed from Central Province. See also KNA ARC(MAWR)-3 Agri-3/62, ‘Notes for the enquiry into maize control, 1943’, Sir Henry Moore's draft speech to the Legislative Council, 16 March 1943.

38 KNA ARC(MAWR)-3 Agri-3/62, ‘Notes for the enquiry into maize control, 1943’, A. B. Killick to the Secretary of the Food Shortage Commission, 30 April 1943, and C. O. Oates to A. B. Killick, 8 March and the Department of Agriculture's ‘Summary of Nyanza Rainfall’, 7 May 19.

39 KNA DC/MKS 1/1/29, ‘Machakos Annual Report, 1943’, 1–3 and 9.

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43 KNA DC/NN 1/27, ‘North Nyanza Annual Report, 1945’, 8.

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46 Ibid. Also, KNA Lab 9/97, ‘Association of District Councils, 1941–53’, for a report of the District Councils’ conferences of 26–27 June and 12–13 September 1944; KNA Lab 9/317, ‘Resident labour: Nakuru, 1945–53’; and KNA Lab 9/1071, ‘Resident labourers ordinance: the problem of the squatter: Ad hoc committee, 1946–48’, especially E. M. Hyde-Clarke to G. M. Rennie, 17 September 1946.

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