Land, Ecology and Resistance in Kenya, 1880-1952

The book examines the gender and class dimensions of resistance to colonial rule in the context of struggles over the control and use of land in Murang'a (then Fort Hall) District in Kenya between 1880 and 1952. The objective is, first, to expose the process through which colonial rule was effected through the creation of discourses of 'betterment' and 'environmentalism'. The author demonstrates how, by this means, the state attempted to remove the deeply political issue of land distribution between African and European from the realm of politics, and recast it in what was claimed to be the neutral language of legal regimes and of western science and technology. The second objective is to recover the gender and class dimensions of counternarratives which challenged the colonial administration. Drawing on the stories of elderly people still living in Murang'a, in the mid 1980s, in order to challenge the discourse of colonial documents, the author shows how both public and everyday forms of resistance were an integral part of the politics of resistance to colonial rule.