Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-75dct Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-02T15:31:15.524Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Legitimation and Paternalism: The Colonial State in Kenya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

John F. Murphy
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Most contemporary historians of the colonial period in Kenya emphasize the importance of the state. The colonial state, it is argued, ensures the conditions of settler capitalism, provides the infrastructure of transport, credit, marketing and agricultural research, creates by administrative action a supply of African labor, and generally ensures the interests of settler capital against those of an emerging African class of landed capital (Brett, 1973; Leys, 1975; Swainson, 1980). Equally, the theme of tension between the colonial and metropolitan states is a classic one in colonial history, and one which in much of the Kenya debate is seen as refracting tensions and conflicts between the interests of settler capital and the interests of international capital (Swainson, 1980; Cowen, 1982). Yet, despite this emphasis on the colonial state, very little discussion of its distinctive political features has occurred. The economic functions of the colonial state are stressed to the exclusion of questions about the basis of its legitimacy, of its citizenship principles and of its authority. Gavin Kitching (1985) recently pointed out that we have no really adequate theory of the post-colonial state. We are constrained instead to making negative statements to the effect that it is not simply the agency of one particular class force in Kenya, nor is it a unified force but die site of contending and fractured forces. The argument could well be extended to the colonial state.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , September 1986 , pp. 55 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bennett, G. 1963a. Kenya: A Political History. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bennett, G. 1963b. “Imperial Paternalism: The Representation of African Interests in the Kenyan Legislative Council,” in Robinson, K. and Madden, F. (eds.) Essays in Imperial Government. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bennett, G. 1965. “Settlers and Politics in Kenya,” in Harlow, V. and Chilver, E.M. (eds.) History of East Africa. Vol. II. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Berman, B. 1975. “Provincial Administration and the Contradiction of Colonialism: ‘Development’ Policy and Conflict in Kenya, 1945-1952.” Paper presented to the Conference on the Political Economy of Colonial Kenya, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Brett, E.A. 1973. Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa: The Politics of Economic Change, 1919-1939. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Cowen, M. 1976. “Capital and Peasant Households: A Case of the Central Province, Kenya.” Mimeo, Nairobi.Google Scholar
Cowen, M. 1981. “Commodity Production in Kenya's Central Province,” in Heyer, J., Roberts, P. and Williams, G. (eds.). Rural Development in Tropical Africa. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Cowen, M. 1982. “The British State and Agrarian Accumulation in Kenya,” in Fransman, M. (ed.) Industry and Accumulation in Africa. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Dilley, M. 1966. British Policy in Kenya Colony. London: Cass.Google Scholar
Ghai, Y.P. 1981. “Law and Lawyers in Kenya and Tanzania: Some Political Economy Considerations,” in Dias, C.J. et al (eds.) Lawyers in the Third World. Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies.Google Scholar
Goldsworthy, D. 1971. Colonial Issues in British Politics, 1945-1961. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, J. 1974. “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopaedia Article.” New German Critique 3.Google Scholar
Hebermas, J. 1975. Legitimation Crisis. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Held, D. 1980. Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Hetherington, P. 1978. British Paternalism and Africa, 1920-1940. London: Cass.Google Scholar
Kirk-Greene, A.H.M. (ed.). 1979. Africa in the Colonial Period. III. The Transfer of Power. Oxford: University of Oxford Inter-Faculty Committee for African Studies.Google Scholar
Kitching, G. 1985. “Politics, Method and Evidence in the ‘Kenya Debate’,” in Bernstein, H. and Campbell, B. (eds.) Contradictions of Accumulation in Africa. Beverly Hills: Sage.Google Scholar
Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Leys, C. 1975. Underdevelopment in Kenya: The Political Economy of Neo- Colonialism. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Leys, C. 1976. “The ‘Overdeveloped’ Post-Colonial State: A Re-evaluation.” Review of African Political Economy 5.Google Scholar
Leys, N. 1924. Kenya. London: Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Lonsdale, J. and Berman, B. 1979. “Coping with the Contradictions: The Development of the Colonial State in Kenya, 1895-1914.” Journal of African History 20.Google Scholar
Low, D.A. 1963-1964. “Lion Rampant” Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies 2.Google Scholar
McGregor Ross, W. 1927. Kenya from Within. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Murphy, J. 1984. “‘Cowen School’ in the Historiography of Colonial Kenya: A Critical Assessment” Master's Thesis, Monash University.Google Scholar
Nolutshungu, S. 1982. Changing South Africa: Political Considerations. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Perham, M. and Huxley, E. 1961. Race and Politics in Kenya. London.Google Scholar
Rosberg, C. and Nottingham, J. 1970. The Myth of “Mau Mau”: Nationalism in Kenya. New York: Meridian.Google Scholar
Saul, J. 1974. “The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Tanzania,” in Miliband, R. and Saville, J. (eds.) The Socialist Register, 1974. London: Merlin Press.Google Scholar
Shivji, I. 1976. Class Struggles in Tanzania. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Sorrenson, M.P.K. 1967. Land Reform in the Kikuyu Country: A Study in Government Policy. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sorrenson, M.P.K. 1968. Origins of European Settlement in Kenya. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Swainson, N. 1980. The Development of Corporate Capitalism in Kenya, 1918-1977. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Thornton, A.P. 1959. The Imperial Idea and Its Enemies: A Study in British Power. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Tignor, R. 1976. The Colonial Transformation of Kenya: The Kamba, Kikuyu and Maasai from 1900 to 1939. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wasserman, G. 1976. Politics of De-colonisation: Kenya Europeans and the Land Issue, 1960-65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, M. 1978. Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Wylie, D. 1977. “Confrontation over Kenya: The Colonial Office and its Critics, 1918-1940.” Journal of African History 18, 3.Google Scholar
van Zwanenberg, R.M.A. 1975. Colonial Capitalism and Labour in Kenya, 1919-1939. Nairobi, EALB.Google Scholar