Kenya's earliest inhabitants included some of the first humans to evolve from ancestral members of the genus Homo. Ample fossil evidence for this evolutionary history has been found at Koobi Fora. Later, Kenya was inhabited by hunter-gatherers similar to the present-day Hadza people. According to archaeological dating of associated artefacts and skeletal material, Cushitic speakers first settled in the region's lowlands between 3,200 and 1,300 BC, a phase known as the Lowland Savanna Pastoral Neolithic.
Nilotic-speaking pastoralists (ancestral to Kenya's Nilotic speakers) began migrating from present-day South Sudan into Kenya around 500 BC. Bantu people settled at the coast and the interior between 250 BC and 500 AD. European contact began in 1500 AD with the Portuguese Empire, and effective colonisation of Kenya began in the 19th century during the European exploration of Africa.
Modern-day Kenya emerged from a protectorate, established by the British Empire in 1895, and the subsequent Kenya Colony, which began in 1920. Mombasa was the capital of the British East Africa Protectorate, which included most of what is now Kenya and southwestern Somalia, from 1889 to 1907. Disputes between the UK and the colony led to the Mau Mau revolution, which began in 1952, and the declaration of Kenya's independence in 1963. After independence, Kenya remained a member of the Commonwealth of Nations.
Kenya is a presidential representative democratic republic, in which elected officials represent the people and the president is the head of state and government. The country is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, COMESA, International Criminal Court, as well as several other international organisations.
It is also a major non-NATO ally of the United States. Kenya's economy is the largest in East and Central Africa, with Nairobi serving as a major regional commercial hub. With a per-capita Gross National Income of $2,110, the country is a lower-middle-income economy. Agriculture is the country's largest economic sector; tea and coffee are the sector's traditional cash crops, while fresh flowers are a fast-growing export.
The service industry, particularly tourism, is also one of the country's major economic drivers. Kenya is a member of the East African Community trade bloc, though some international trade organisations categorise it as part of the Greater Horn of Africa. Africa is Kenya's largest export market, followed by the European Union.
Etymology
The Republic of Kenya is named after Mount Kenya. The earliest recorded version of the modern name was written by German explorer Johann Ludwig Krapf in the 19th century. While travelling with a Kamba caravan led by the long-distance trader Chief Kivoi, Krapf spotted the mountain peak and asked what it was called. Kivoi told him "Kฤฉ-Nyaa" or "Kฤฉlฤฉma- Kฤฉinyaa", probably because the pattern of black rock and white snow on its peaks reminded him of the feathers of the male ostrich.
In archaic Kikuyu, the word 'nyaga' or more commonly 'manyaganyaga' is used to describe an extremely bright object. The Agikuyu, who inhabit the slopes of Mt. Kenya, call it Kฤฉrฤฉma Kฤฉrฤฉnyaga (literally 'the mountain with brightness') in Kikuyu, while the Embu call it "Ki-nyaga" or Kirima Kinyaga. All three names have the same meaning.
Ludwig Krapf recorded the name as both Kenia and Kegnia. Some have said that this was a precise notation of the African pronunciation /หkษnjษ/.
An 1882 map drawn by Joseph Thompsons, a Scottish geologist and naturalist, indicated Mt. Kenya as Mt. Kenia. The mountain's name was accepted, pars pro toto, as the name of the country. It did not come into widespread official use during the early colonial period, when the country was referred to as the East African Protectorate. The official name was changed to the Colony of Kenya in 1920.
History
Prehistory
Hominid species, such as Homo habilis (fl. 1.8 to 2.5 million years ago) and Homo erectus (fl. 1.9 million to 350,000 years ago), possibly the direct ancestors of modern Homo sapiens, had lived in Kenya in the Pleistocene epoch. East Africa, including Kenya, is one of the earliest regions where modern humans (Homo sapiens) are believed to have lived.
In 1984, during excavations at Lake Turkana palaeoanthropologist Richard Leakey, assisted by Kamoya Kimeu, discovered the Turkana Boy, a 1.6-million-year-old Homo erectus fossil. Further evidence of Kenya's prehistory was found in 2018, namely the early emergence of modern behaviours, including long-distance trade networks (involving goods such as obsidian), the use of pigments, and possibly the making of projectile points, about 320,000 years ago.
The authors of three 2018 studies on the site suggest that complex and modern behaviours had already begun in Africa around the time of the emergence of Homo sapiens.
The first inhabitants of present-day Kenya were ancestral hunter-gatherer groups, akin to the modern Khoisan speakers. They were subsequently joined by Southern Nilotic hunter-gatherers, such as the Ogiek, who established a deep, indigenous presence in the highland forests long before the arrival of later migrating groups.
These people were later largely replaced by agropastoralist Cushitic (ancestral to Kenya's Cushitic speakers), who originated from the Horn of Africa. During the early Holocene, the region's climate shifted from drier to wetter conditions. This provided an opportunity for the development of cultural traditions such as agriculture and herding in a more favourable environment.
Nilotic-speaking pastoralists began migrating into Kenya from the Nile Valley and the Ethiopian Highlands as early as 2000 BC. The earliest arrivals were Southern Nilotes (ancestors of the Kalenjin), followed by subsequent waves of Eastern and Western Nilotes.[citation needed] Today, the country's Nilotic ethnic groups include the Kalenjin, Samburu, Luo, Turkana, Maasai and others.
By the first millennium AD, Bantu-speaking farmers had moved into the region, initially along the Kenyan coast. The Bantus had originated in West Africa along the Benue River in what is now eastern Nigeria and western Cameroon. The Bantu migration brought new developments in agriculture and ironworking to the region. Today, the country's Bantu groups include the Kikuyu, Luhya, Kamba, Kisii, Meru, Kuria, Aembu, Ambeere, Wadawida-Watuweta, Wapokomo, and Mijikenda, among many others.
Notable prehistoric sites in the interior of Kenya include the (possibly archaeoastronomical) site Namoratunga on the west side of Lake Turkana and the walled settlement of Thimlich Ohinga in Migori County.
Swahili trade period
The coastline of Kenya was home to communities of ironworkers and Bantu subsistence farmers, hunters, and fishers who supported the region's economy with agriculture, fishing, metal production, and trade with foreign countries. These communities formed the earliest city-states in the region, which were collectively known as Azania. The Swahili people were of mixed African and Asian (particularly Persian) ancestry, as DNA evidence has revealed.
By the 1st century CE, many of the area's city-states, such as Mombasa, Malindi, and Zanzibar, began to establish trading relations with the Arabs. This led to increased economic growth of the Swahili states, the introduction of Islam, Arabic influences on the Swahili language, cultural diffusion, as well as the Swahili city-states becoming members of a larger trade network.
Many historians had long believed that the city-states were established by Arab or Persian traders, but archaeological evidence has led scholars to recognise the city-states as an indigenous development which, though subjected to foreign influence due to trade, retained a Bantu cultural core.
The earliest native written sources date to this period. For example, there is a dedicatory inscription in the Msikiti wa Pwani in Lamu dating to 1370 or 1371 AD (772 AH). These pre-colonial sources are in Arabic but contain Swahili loanwords, as illustrated by the 1462 AD (866 AH) funerary inscription of Mwana wa Bwana binti Mwidani on Mombasa Island.
The Kilwa Sultanate was a medieval sultanate centred at Kilwa, in modern-day Tanzania. At its height, its authority stretched over the entire length of the Swahili Coast, including Kenya. Beginning in the 10th century, the rulers of Kilwa would go on to build elaborate coral mosques and introduce copper coinage.
Swahili, a Bantu language with Arabic, Persian, and other Middle-Eastern and South Asian loanwords, later developed as a lingua franca for trade between the different peoples. Since the turn of the 20th century, Swahili has also adopted numerous loanwords and calques from English, many of which originated during the era of British colonial rule.
Early Portuguese presence
The Swahili built Mombasa into a major port city and established trade links with other nearby city-states, as well as commercial centres in Persia, Arabia, and even India. By the 15th century, Portuguese voyager Duarte Barbosa wrote that "Mombasa is a place of great traffic and has a good harbour in which there are always moored small craft of many kinds and also great ships, both of which are bound from Sofala and others which come from Cambay and Melinde and others which sail to the island of Zanzibar."
One major city on the Kenyan coast is Malindi. It has been an important Swahili settlement since the 14th century, and the city once rivalled Mombasa for dominance in the African Great Lakes region. Malindi has traditionally been a friendly port city for foreign powers. In 1414, the Chinese trader and explorer Zheng He, representing the Ming dynasty, visited the East African coast on one of his last 'treasure voyages'. Malindi also welcomed the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama in 1498.[citation needed]
In the 17th century, the Swahili coast was conquered by the Omani Arabs, who expanded the slave trade to meet the demands of plantations in Oman and Zanzibar. Initially, these traders came mainly from Oman, but later many came from Zanzibar (such as Tippu Tip). In addition, the Portuguese started buying slaves from the Omani and Zanzibari traders in response to the interruption of the transatlantic slave trade by British abolitionists.[citation needed]
18th and 19th centuries
During the 18th and 19th century, the Masai people moved into the central and southern Rift Valley plains of Kenya, from a region north of Lake Rudolf (now Lake Turkana). Although there weren't many of them, they managed to conquer a great amount of land in the plains, where people did not put up much resistance.[citation needed] The Nandi peoples managed to oppose the Masai, while the Taveta peoples fled to the forests on the eastern edge of Mount Kilimanjaro, although they later were forced to leave the land due to the threat of smallpox.
An outbreak of either rinderpest or pleuropneumonia greatly affected the Masai's cattle, while an epidemic of smallpox affected the Masai themselves. After the death of the Masai Mbatian, the chief laibon (medicine man), the Masai split into warring factions. The Masai caused much strife in the areas they conquered; however, cooperation between such groups as the Luo people, Luhya people, and Gusii people is evidenced by shared vocabulary for modern implements and similar economic regimes.
Although Arab traders remained in the area, trade routes were disrupted by the hostile Masai, though there was trade in ivory between these factions.
The first foreigners to successfully get past the Masai were Johann Ludwig Krapf and Johannes Rebmann, two German missionaries who established a mission in Rabai, not too far from Mombasa. The pair were the first Europeans to sight Mount Kenya.
German Protectorate (1885โ1890)
The German Empire established a protectorate over the Sultan of Zanzibar's coastal possessions in 1885, followed by the arrival of the Imperial British East Africa Company in 1888. Imperial rivalry was prevented by the HeligolandโZanzibar Treaty, so Germany handed its East African coastal holdings to Britain in 1890.
Nandi Resistance (1890โ1906)
The Nandi Resistance (1890โ1906), also known as the Kalenjin Resistance, was the most prolonged military challenge to British colonial establishment in East Africa. For nearly two decades, the Nandi and Kipsigis peoplesโled by the Orkoiyot Koitalel Arap Samoei defended their territories in the western highlands of Kenya's Rift Valley.
By using effective guerrilla warfare and sabotage against the construction of the Uganda Railway, they successfully stalled British administrative control for nearly two decades.
Despite several "punitive expeditions," the British were unable to achieve a conventional military victory over the Kalenjin warriors. The resistance was broken through an act of treachery on 19 October 1905, when Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen lured Samoei to a purported truce meeting and assassinated him. Following this, Samoei's body was decapitated and his head was taken to London as a colonial trophy, marking the end of the fierce military opposition by the Kalenjin and allowing the British to finally establish administrative control over the region.
British Kenya (1888โ1962)
The transfer by Germany to Britain was followed by the building of the Uganda Railway passing through the country.
The building of the railway was resisted by some ethnic groupsโnotably the Nandi, led by Orkoiyot Koitalel Arap Samoei from 1890 to 1900โbut the British eventually built it. The Nandi were the first ethnic group to be put in a native reserve to stop them from disrupting the building of the railway.
During the railway construction era, there was a significant influx of Indian workers, who provided the bulk of the skilled labour required for construction. They and most of their descendants later remained in Kenya and formed the core of several distinct Indian communities, such as the Ismaili Muslim and Sikh communities.
While building the railway through Tsavo, a number of the Indian railway workers and local African labourers were attacked by two lions known as the Tsavo maneaters.
At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the governors of British East Africa (as the protectorate was generally known) and German East Africa initially agreed on a truce in an attempt to keep the young colonies out of direct hostilities. But Lieutenant Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, the German military commander, determined to tie down as many British resources as possible.
Completely cut off from Germany, Lettow-Vorbeck conducted an effective guerrilla warfare campaign, living off the land, capturing British supplies, and remaining undefeated. He eventually surrendered in Northern Rhodesia (today Zambia) 14 days after the Armistice was signed in 1918.
To chase von Lettow, the British deployed the British Indian Army troops from India but needed large numbers of porters to overcome the formidable logistics of transporting supplies far into the interior on foot. The Carrier Corps was formed and ultimately mobilised over 400,000 Africans, contributing to their long-term politicisation.
In 1920, the East Africa Protectorate was turned into a colony and renamed Kenya after its highest mountain.
During the early part of the 20th century, the interior central highlands were settled by British and other European farmers, who became wealthy farming coffee and tea. One depiction of this period of change from a colonist's perspective is found in the memoir Out of Africa by Danish author Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke, published in 1937.
By the 1930s, approximately 30,000 white settlers lived in the area and gained a political voice because of their contribution to the market economy.
The central highlands were already home to over a million members of the Kikuyu people, most of whom had no land claims in European terms and lived as itinerant farmers. To protect their own interests the settlers banned the growing of coffee and introduced a hut tax, and the landless were granted less and less land in exchange for their labour.
A massive exodus to the cities ensued as their ability to make a living from the land dwindled. By the 1950s there were 80,000 white settlers living in Kenya.
Throughout World War II, Kenya was an important source of manpower and agriculture for the United Kingdom. Kenya itself was the site of fighting between Allied forces and Italian troops in 1940โ41, when Italian forces invaded. Wajir and Malindi were bombed as well.
Mau Mau Uprising
From October 1952 to December 1959, Kenya was in a state of emergency arising from the Mau Mau rebellion against British rule. The Mau Mau, also known as the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, were primarily Kikuyu, Embu and Meru people. During the colonial administration's crackdown, over 11,000 freedom fighters had been killed, along with 100 British troops and 2,000 Kenyan loyalist soldiers.
War crimes were committed on both sides of the conflict, including the publicised Lari massacre and the Hola massacre. The governor requested and obtained British and African troops, including the King's African Rifles. The British began counter-insurgency operations. In May 1953, General Sir George Erskine took charge as commander-in-chief of the colony's armed forces, with the personal backing of Winston Churchill.
The capture of Waruhiu Itote (nom de guerre "General China") on 15 January 1954 and the subsequent interrogation led to a better understanding of the Mau Mau command structure for the British. Operation Anvil opened on 24 April 1954, after weeks of planning by the army with the approval of the War Council. The operation effectively placed Nairobi under military siege.
Nairobi's occupants were screened, and suspected Mau Mau supporters moved to detention camps. More than 80,000 Kikuyu were held in detention camps without trial, often subject to brutal treatment. The Home Guard formed the core of the government's strategy as it was composed of loyalist Africans, not foreign forces such as the British Army and King's African Rifles.