The Footprints of History

Abstract

The recent historical change of property rights to land in Kenya’s Maasailand, and in Kenya more generally, is closely linked to the advent of British colonial administration at the close of the nineteenth century. This administration’s objectives of political control, revenue generation, and economic development in first the East African Protectorate and later the Kenya Colony, were at the core of a series of land-based policy interventions, which are discussed in this chapter. The postcolonial administration in turn drew heavily from and gave expression to ideas and interventions crafted by its predecessor. These new institutional arrangements resulted in greater privatization of Maasailand and a fundamental reworking of land property rights systems and relations among the Maasai.