Green City in the Sun [antikvár]

FOREWORD Kenya came into existence by accident. In 1894 the British were anxious to get to Uganda, a strategic military point at the headwaters of the Nile in the heart of Africa, so they built a railway from the east coast of Africa inland six hundred miles to Lake Victoria, the gateway to Uganda. As it happened, that train crossed a stretch of land inhabited by wild game and warring tribes, a land that appealed only to intrepid explorers and missionaries. When, after its completion, the Uganda Railway proved to be a financial drain and a white elephant, the British government sought a way to make the railway pay for itself. The answer, it was soon seen, lay in encouraging settlement along the line. The first to be oiFered this "vacant" territory were the Zionist Jews, who were at that time searching for a permanent homeland. But the Jews declined, wanting to go to Palestine. So a campaign was launched to lure immigrants from all over the British Empire. Treaties were drawn up with the local tribes, which had little concept of treaties and were somewhat perplexed by what the white man was doing here; then the government oiFered, cheaply, huge tracts of "unused" wilderness to anyone who would come and settle and develop it. The central highlands of this country, being at a high elevation, were cool and fertile and lush; many Britons from England, Australia, and New Zealand, looking for a new home, a place to make a fresh start and build a new life, were attracted. Although the Colonial Office staunchly maintained that the area was just a protectorate and would one day be returned to its black inhabitants when they had been taught how to run it, in 1905, when two thousand whites were outnumbered by four million Africans, the British commissioner for the East Africa Protectorate declared that the protectorate was a "White Man's country."