Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T20:45:49.927Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Impact of Military Service in World War I on Africans: the Nandi of Kenya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Lewis J. Greenstein
Affiliation:
Assistant Dean of Moravian College, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Extract

It is widely believed that old soldiers are a problem. At least since the beginning of this century, western governments have been concerned with the issue of ‘helping’ veterans to readjust to civilian life upon their return from campaigning. It is assumed that these men would, if left to their own devices, find it difficult or impossible to ‘pick up from where they had left off’, and might, therefore, become a subversive element in the general population. Hence, one of the largest bureaucracies in the United States is the Veterans Administration which is charged with fitting ex-soldiers back into society. To a certain extent the concerns over whether they would be satisfied after their demobilisation have proved to be justified. The dislocations experienced by returned American servicemen after World War II were illustrated by popular films like ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’. More recently, the American press paid considerable attention to the rôle of the black veterans of Vietnam in the violence which destroyed much of Newark, Detroit, and Watts in the late 1960s.

Type
Africana
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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

page 495 note 1 Rosberg, Carl G. and Nottingham, John, The Myth of Man Mau: nationalism in Kenya (Nairobi, 1966), pp. 26–7.Google Scholar

page 495 note 2 Ogot, Bethwell A., ‘Kenya Under the British, 1895–1963’, in Ogot, (ed.), Zamani: a survey of East African history (Nairobi, 1973 edn.), p. 265.Google Scholar

page 496 note 1 ‘Governor Belfield to the War Office’, 16 August 1916; C.A.B. 45/24, Public Records Office, London.

page 496 note 2 ‘Acting Governor Bowring to the Secretary of State for the Colonies’, June 1918; C.O. 533/196, ibid.

page 496 note 3 ‘Report of the Chief Native Commissioner for the period 1 April 1918 to 31 March 1919’; Ainsworth Papers, Mss. Afr. s. 377–382, Colonial Records Project, Rhodes House, Oxford.

page 497 note 1 The documentary and oral evidence for this study was collected in England and Kenya in 1973 with the support of a Fulbright–Hays grant. In all, 52 Nandi veterans were interviewed, as well as 20 men and women of the same age who had not served in the military. See my ‘Africans in a European War: the First World War in East Africa with special reference to the Nandi of Kenya’, Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1975.

page 497 note 2 The Nandi are an age-graded society with initiations for men held on a roughly 14-year cycle. Almost all of the veterans were from a single age-grade. The standard sources for anthropological material are: Hollis, A. C., The Nandi: their language and folklore (London, 1953);Google ScholarHuntingford, G. W. B., The Nandi of Kenya (New York, 1953);Google ScholarSnell, G. S., Nandi Customary Law (London, 1954);Google Scholar and Matson, A. T., Nandi Resistance to British Rule, 1890–1906 (Nairobi, 1972).Google Scholar

page 498 note 1 ‘Nandi District Annual Report’, 31 March 1917; Kenya National Archives, Nairobi.

page 498 note 2 The British Government never authorised the payment of pensions to African soldiers. It is possible, however, that individual officers spoke to their men of such rewards in an attempt to boost morale and obtain maximum effort from the troops.

page 498 note 3 The Reserve to which the Nandi were restricted in 1906 consisted of 440,000 acres. Of this, 51,000 acres were forest and unsuitable for grazing or agriculture. Thus, the 64,000 acres alienated in 1920 represented over 16 per cent of the good grazing land available to the Nandi.

page 499 note 1 Technically, the K.A.R. was voluntarily recruited until 1917 when conscription was approved by the Colonial Office. The men I interviewed – all of whom were recruited before 1917– believed that the Government would punish them if they refused to ‘volunteer’.

page 500 note 1 There is no evidence to suggest that there was an entrepreneurial motive involved in the purchase of land; nor was the land turned over to cultivation. The purchasers were, in most cases, individuals whose own land was undesirable for grazing.

page 501 note 1 An exception was the Nandi women who migrated to Nakuru and Nairobi to work as prostitutes. It is tempting to speculate that the absence of so many young men during World War I was a stimulus to this migration but it cannot be substantiated.

page 501 note 2 Nandi District Annual Report, 31 March 1914; Kenya National Archives.

page 501 note 3 Nandi District Quarterly Report, 31 December 1909; ibid.

page 501 note 4 Nandi District Annual Report, 31 March 1919; ibid.

page 501 note 5 Nandi District Annual Report, 31 March 1922; ibid.

page 501 note 6 Huntingford, G. W. B., Nandi Work and Culture (London, 1950), p. 73.Google Scholar

page 502 note 1 A. T. Matson, interview in London on 13 October 1972.

page 502 note 2 Three of these men were still in the K.A.R. at the outbreak of World War II. The discussion which follows in the text is based on evidence gathered from a ‘statistical remnant’, namely all living Nandi veterans who could be located. It is not a random sample, but no bias was discovered which would suggest that it was not representative of the group as a whole.

page 502 note 3 The percentage of non-commissioned officers in my survey is dearly larger than the percentage of those among all the men who served in the K.A.R. One might speculate that the stronger men tended to win promotions to the rank of corporal or sergeant, and that they survived in greater numbers than those who did not exhibit the strength which won promotion.

page 503 note 1 This was true despite the European preference for employing the Nandi which derived from their excellent record of service in the K.A.R.

page 503 note 2 The Mombasa Times and East Coast Herald (Mombasa), 24 10 1919.

page 503 note 3 Arap Korony was a much honoured hero whose reputation was well known to the other veterans. He might have been a logical choice to lead any veteran organisation in the District.

page 504 note 1 Although clans existed in Nandi society, they were a less important principle of organising than age or geography. Traditionally, Nandi territory was divided into seven emotinwek (sing. emet) or counties. These were further sub-divided into 15 pororosiek (sing. pororiet) or districts, each split into korotinwek (sing. koret) or parishes.

page 504 note 2 Shiroya, Okete J., ‘The Impact of World War II on Kenya: the role of ex-servicemen in Kenyan nationalism’, Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 1968, pp. 197–8.Google Scholar

page 504 note 3 Ibid. p. 208.

page 505 note 1 The Nandi Orkoiyot was an individual with supernatural powers and the ability to foretell the future, similar to the Maasai Laibon. Other members of the Talai clan were said to have lesser powers and were called orkoiik. The so-called ‘Uprising’ has been discussed by Ellis, Diana, ‘The Nandi Protest of 1923 in the Context of African Resistance to Colonial Rule in Kenya’, in The Journal of African History (Cambridge), XVIII, 4, 1976, pp. 555–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also my article, ‘The Nandi ‘Uprising’ of 1923’, in Pan-African Journal (Nairobi), IX, 4, 1976.

page 506 note 1 Schleh, Eugene P. A., ‘Post-Service Careers of African World War II Veterans: British East and West Africa with particular reference to Ghana and Uganda’, Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1968, p. 204.Google Scholar

page 506 note 2 The adage, ‘You can't keep them down on the farm once they've seen Paree’, is most appropriate in this context. Unlike the K.A.R. of 1939–45, which saw action in Burma and travelled by aeroplane and steamship, the men who pursued a small German force through German East Africa and Mozambique for four years did not ‘see Paree’. I am indebted to Professor Charles R. Boxer for calling the phrase to mind.

page 506 note 3 Shiroya, op. cit. p. 203.