A Brief History of Kenya

About 2.5 million years ago Homo habilis lived in the rich fertile rift valley. By 50,000 BC Homo erectus had emerged and Stone age cultures spread over this area. The forefathers of Homo sapiens became hunter gatherers. Cu####ic- speaking agro-pastoral people from the north, Ethiopia, and pastoral Nolites followed from the Nile valley moved across during 3000 to 1500 BC.

Bantu speaking cattle herders and cultivators came from Sudan and West Africa between 500 BC and 500 AD. By about 800 AD Omani-Arab traders operated down the east African coast, under the Sultan of Zanzibar, and intermarried with the Bantu creating the Swahili culture.

In the 16th and 17th Centuries the Portuguese gained control of coastal trade, but Arab resistance saw their power restored
During 1780 and 1850 Britain, France Germany and America established trading concessions with Zanzibar, but by 1895 Kenya had become a British protectorate. During the late 1890s and early 1900s the Kenya- Uganda railway was built and a white settler community was established.

When Kenya became a British colony in 1919, organized African political activity developed. By 1944 KANU (Kenya African National Union) had formed, and Jomo Kenyatta became KANU's President in 1947. The Mau Mau uprising (1952-56) which resulted in over 10,00 deaths led to Kenyatta becoming Prime Minister of an independent Kenya in 1963.

Jomo Kenyatta died in 1978 and was succeeded by Daniel Arap Moi. Although other political parties were by now permitted, Moi and Kanu were returned to power in 1992 and again in 1997, though with substantial opposition.

Kenya Historical Timeline Courtesy of National Museums of Kenya
4.1 million years before the present Austrolopithicus anamensis, considered one of the first upright walking humans, inhabited the west of what is now called Lake Turkana.
3.5 million years before the present Kenyanthropus platyops lived in the area West of Lake Turkana; skeleton remains found between 1998-1999 and stored at the National Museums of Kenya.
200 A.D. Bantu migrants bring technology to the Coast of Kenya.
700+ A.D. Arabs who traded with the local people introduce Islam on the Coast of East Africa.
+750 A.D. Swahili urban settlements spring up along the Kenyan Coast.
10-14th Century The Nilotes, consisting of the Kalenjin, Maasai, Turkana, Iteso, and Luo, moved from the West of Lake Turkana into Kenya.
13th Century Some Bantu speakers split into two groups when moving into Central Tanzania settling in between Mt. Kilimanjaro and the Indian Ocean. The first group migrated north forming the Taveta, Dawida and Akamba peoples. The second group moved along the coast into the hilltops behind the coastline north becoming the Mijikenda. And a third group moving westwards settled in the Kenya Highlands, which became the Agikuyu, Aembu, Chuka, Tharaka, and the Ameru.
15th Century "Golden Age" of Swahili Civilization
15th-17th Century The Luos migrated from southern Sudan to Uganda and settled on the shores of Lake Victoria. From there they began spreading along the shores to Kisumu and Kano Plains.
1528 The first Portuguese attack on Mombasa
1593 Fort Jesus is built by the Portuguese in Mombasa
18th Century The Maasai moved through the plains before settling in the Rift Valley area.
1846 August 25th Dr. Ludwig Krapf, a German and missionary of the Church Missionary Society of England, establishes the first Christian Mission of Kenya among the Mijikenda on the coast.
1883 Joseph Thomson is the first European explorer to pass through Maasai country.
1887 Sir William Mackinnon and the British East Africa Association accept a concession of the Zanzibar sultan's territory for a 50-year period.
1890 Waiyaki Wa Hinga, a Kikuyu chief who ruled Dagoretti, signed a treaty with Fredrick Lugard of the Imperial British East Africa Company. Lugard settled in Dagoretti and began harassing the Kikuyu for their women and food. In defiance to his demands they burnt down Lugard's fortress. In 1892, the British administration kidnapped Hinga and buried him alive along the coast of Kenya.
1894 British government declares a protectorate over Kenya and Uganda, calling it the The East Africa Protectorate and Sir Arthur Hardinge becomes the first Commissioner.
1896-1897 The British sends military expeditions against the Kikuyu and the Kamba to assert authority.
Late 19th Century Koitalel Arap Samoei, a diviner and Nandi leader prophesied that a black snake would tear through Nandi land spitting fire, which was seen later as the railway line. For ten years he fought against the builders of the railway line and train. Later, determined to continue the railway line, the British created a trap and killed Samoei.
Early 20th Century Mekatilili Wa Menza resisted British attempts to eradicate Giriama traditional culture through the destruction of kaya, sacred forest shrines and places of worship. She led the Giriama people into a rebellion against the British. Mekatilili was later captured and exiled to Western Kenya.
1901 First railway line completed from Mombasa to Kisumu on Lake Victoria.
1909 National Museums of Kenya founded
1920 The status of the East Africa Protectorate is changed to the Kenya Colony and the coastal strip is named the Kenya Protectorate.
1921 The first African political protest movement in Kenya against the government began by the Young Kikuyu Association, led by Harry Thuku.
1944 The first African is included in legislative council of an East African territory.
1947 In preparation for efforts to gain freedom from the British rule, members of the Kikuyu, Embu, Meru and Kamba took oaths of unity and secrecy, thus the Mau Mau movement began.
1953 April 8th Jomo Kenyatta, born Kamau wa Ngengi, is charged with directing the Mau Mau movement and sentenced to 7 years imprisonment.
1956 Dedan Kimathi was arrested on February 18th for his role in the Mau Mau uprising as a Field Marshall leading thousands of fighters for the struggle of independence.
1959 Jomo Kenyatta is released from prison.
1960 Africans allowed to form their own nationwide political parties. African leaders met in Kambu and created The Kenya African National Union (KANU), led by J.S. Gichuru, Oginga Odinga, Tom Mboya and later joined by Jomo Kenyatta.
1963 June 1st Kenya achieved internal self-government, known as Madaraka (Freedom). June 1st is Madaraka Day, now celebrated as Self Rule Day.
1963 December 12th Kenya becomes fully independent
1964 Kenya becomes a Republic with Jomo Kenyatta as its first President and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga as Vice President
1966 Vice President Oginga Odinga forms a new opposition party, Kenya People's Union (KPU) 1969 July
1969 July Tom Mboya, Minister of Economic Planning, and Development is assassinated.
1978 Jomo Kenyatta dies.
1978 October Daniel arap Moi succeeds Kenyatta as Kenya's second President.
1992 Section 14 of the Constitution is repealed and Kenya holds its first multi-party elections.
1994 Oginga Odinga dies.
1997 Second multi-party elections


Historic Highlights
Bantu and Masai Migrations
The Zenj States and the Portuguese
The Omani Dynasty
British Rule
The Kikuyu Revolt

IndependenceKenya is an ethnic and cultural melting pot. Its present population is the result of incursions of differing groups over the past 1500 years. Before ad 1000 East Africa was invaded by Nilotic clans from the north. The invaders, called Hima, were aristocratic pastoralists who introduced cattle herding and developed powerful kingdoms.

Bantu and Masai Migrations
Bantu invasions after the 14th century forced most of the Nilotes into Uganda, where they established new kingdoms, or into Tanzania, where, mixing with the Bantu, they became the Sukuma and Nyamwezi. In Kenya a similar process absorbed the Nilotic Luo into basic Bantu culture. The Bantu invaded Kenya by two routes. The Kamba and Kikuyu took the northerly way from west of the great lakes area and settled in the highlands. A more southerly route was followed by the Taita and other coastal Bantu. Both of these groups were organized into clans, with no centralized social or political institutions. No large, powerful Bantu kingdoms ever emerged in Kenya. Even the Kikuyu, the most numerous of the Bantu groups, were satisfied with the clan system. The soil in the uplands was fertile, and agriculture flourished there. The Bantu, using the terrain of the Rift Valley, particularly the valleys and hills of the highlands and the Aberdare Mountains, defended themselves from later invaders without being forced to alter fundamentally their political systems.

Still another group of invaders came to Kenya in the 17th century from the region north of Lake Turkana (Lake Rudolf). These were the Nilo-Hamitic Masai clans with their cattle herds. Scorning the uplands for the plains of central and southern Kenya, they clashed with the Bantu only on the frontiers. Their societies were also based on clans, and although the warrior, or muran, was a dominant figure, the Masai never had large armies. Like the Bantu, they presented few military problems to the Europeans who divided up East Africa in the 19th century.

The Zenj States and the Portuguese
After the 11th century, the coastal areas were dominated by traders and settlers from southern Arabia. They established the various Zenj city-states, so called because in Arabic the country was known as the land of the Zenj, or black people. The most important of these settlements in Kenya were Malindi and Mombasa. The Muslim entrepreneurs were content to control the interior trade, and their cities became important ports in the Indian Ocean trade system. In time a composite Arabic-Bantu culture developed along the coast, exemplified by the hybrid Swahili language, which became the trading language of East Africa. Generally independent from one another, the Zenj states were from time to time dominated by powerful non-African maritime empires. One of these was the sultanate of Oman and Muscat, which for centuries vied with the Europeans for supremacy along the coast. The Portuguese, following Vasco da Gama's discovery of the sea route to India in 1498, attempted to monopolize all Indian Ocean trade, and for more than a century, despite native resistance, they dominated the Zenj states. Fort Jesus, a massive 16th-century fortress in Mombasa, stands as a memorial to their former power on the Kenya coast. After the Dutch and the English wrested the trade from the Portuguese early in the 17th century, however, the Zenj states regained their independence.

The Omani Dynasty
In the early 19th century Sultan Sayyid Said of Oman (reigned 1806-56) conquered all the city-states north of Cape Delgado. Ruling over a commercial empire, he did not try to dominate the interior Bantu clans, and he eventually moved his capital to the island of Zanzibar in present-day Tanzania. The clove plantations on Zanzibar and oil-palm groves at Mombasa, developed by Said, needed a large labor force, and this need was met by the slave trade. Controlled from Mombasa and Zanzibar, this trade extended into Africa's interior as far as Zaire. Swahili slavers sometimes raided weak Bantu clans, but they generally traded for slaves with the stronger African states. The cruelty of the trade brought revived European interest in Kenya. The British consul on Zanzibar took the lead in the anti-slave-trade movement. In return for guarantees of continued protection, the sultan by the 1850s had signed treaties limiting the scope of the trade. Finally, in 1873, fearing that the British would support a European takeover of his empire, Said's son, Barghash (reigned 1870-88), agreed to abolition.
British Rule
The British consul from 1873 to 1886 was John Kirk (1832-1922), who advised Sultan Barghash to raise an army and annex most of eastern Kenya and Tanzania. Refusing this advice, the sultan was helpless in the face of European territorial imperialism. German imperialists led the way, and their claims were upheld at the Congress of Berlin. In 1886 the British recognized the German sphere of influence over coastal Tanganyika (part of present-day Tanzania), retaining the Kenya area for themselves. A further territorial division took place in 1890. For a time British interests in Kenya were maintained by the Imperial British East Africa Company, but in 1896 the British Foreign Office assumed direct control primarily because of the decision to build a railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria. British annexation was not seriously contested by any of the Bantu or Masai. In 1902 all Kenya became a dependency under the Colonial Office. It became the British base of operations in the protracted East African campaign against the Germans during World War I. The type of government established in Kenya was the crown colony system. The governor and the secretariat were appointed from London. Most Africans, however, continued to be ruled in some fashion by their own leaders under the general guidance of a British district officer. Tribal lands were guaranteed, but all unoccupied territory became crown land. Even before 1900 some white colonists had recognized the economic value of the highlands and had begun to settle the fertile lands adjacent to Nairobi. By the close of World War I more than 9000 Europeans were in Kenya, and much of the highlands had been reserved for continual white settlement. The government, claiming to be concerned with "native paramountcy," actually favored the productive white minority. African economics and politics were closely monitored at a time when the depression of the 1930s and an expanding population showed the inadequacy of the land reserved for the natives.

The Kikuyu Revolt
The Kikuyu, denied any major additions to their reserve and never reconciled to the loss of their original lands, began an agitation after World War II, which culminated in the Mau Mau uprising of the early 1950s. Although the rebellion did not spread to the other native peoples, it cost the lives of a few Europeans and thousands of Kikuyu, and the expenditure of millions of dollars. By the end of the emergency, in 1956, the prosettler policy was abandoned in favor of one similar to that being followed in West Africa, leading to majority rule and independence. The only difficulty in this period concerned Jomo Kenyatta, the Kikuyu leader, who had been imprisoned for complicity in the Mau Mau uprising. The major Kenya political party, the Kenya African National Union (KANU), refused to cooperate fully until their leader was released. Once this was done (1961), full cooperation ensured Kenya's independence, which was proclaimed on December 12, 1963.

Independence
Despite the fears of white settlers, African rule proved moderate, pro-Western, and progressive. Although Kenya by 1965 was a functioning one-party state, considerable freedom was permitted within the party, and the government seldom misused its powers. Internal peace among the different tribes and nations was maintained, and land redistribution calmed much of the clamor of Kenya's traditional leaders. Kenya became a republic in 1964, and Kenyatta was chosen its first president. He sought to maintain good relations with Kenya's neighbors but did have some difficulties with Tanzania and with the Ugandan regime of Idi Amin. The East African Community, an economic union of the three countries established in 1967 and once considered a promising start for political unification, was gradually phased out (although in the early 1980s the community's former members considered reviving it). Kenyatta's moderate, stable government attracted large foreign investments. A new industrial area was established near Thika, and central Nairobi was modernized. The tourist industry, based on Kenya's great national wildlife reserves, continued to thrive. Kenyatta was recognized at the time of his death in mid-1978 as Mzee, "the wise old one," not only by his own people but by a wide array of world leaders.

Fears of possible civil war between Luo and Kikuyu groups when Kenyatta died proved unfounded, and his successor, Daniel arap Moi, followed the same moderate political and economic policies. However, in June 1982 he made Kenya officially a one-party state. Two months later an attempt by air force units to oust him was crushed by loyal troops. As the 1990s began, Moi reacted to rising domestic opposition by jailing his leading critics; in late 1991, however, he bowed to pressure from international aid donors by legalizing opposition parties. Kenya's first multiparty election in 26 years was held in December 1992. Moi won the election and was sworn for his fourth term as president in January 1993.

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