Review by Choice Review
The creation of Kenya constituted a remarkable episode in Britain's colonial experience in Africa. On several occasions whites almost managed to hijack an otherwise steady pro-African policy in East Africa. Between 1912 and 1923, they "turned" several governors to their political and economic favor, in the process converting Kenya (like Rhodesia and South Africa) from a country of aspiring African peasants into a land of migrating wage earners. Although Maxon's history of the making of Kenya is based almost exclusively on Colonial Office records, hitherto only partially exploited, he focuses well on each of the critical issues that eventually saved Kenya from becoming a truly settler colony like Rhodesia. Maxon intimately describes the pro-settler governors and their written battles with the mandarins in the Colonial Office. He shows how policy toward Indians and Africans was made, and why. He emphasizes the roles of the Colonial Office and the Treasury in seeking to restrain settler primacy for financial reasons. He devotes little space to the pro-African British humanitarian lobby, but others have told that story well. This is old-fashioned archival microhistory at its best. Detailed notes; good bibliography and index. Advanced undergraduate; graduate; faculty. R. I. Rotberg; Lafayette College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
