From Constituting Communities to Dividing Districts: The Formalization of a Cultural Border between Mombasa and Its Hinterland

Abstract

The popular image of ignorant diplomats carving up blank maps of Africa into European colonies elides the extensive negotiations over space, power, and identity that played out in the towns and countrysides of Kenya until colonial rule ended in 1963.¹ In order to capture how Mombasa’ residents participated in cementing the division of their communities, this chapter combines ethnographic consultations that I conducted with local residents in 2010 and 2011 with archival evidence written and collected by European officials in the early twentieth century, including ethnographic data collected by colonial anthropologists and petitions from Mombasa residents.² Reading archival documents through an ethnographic lens emphasizes that Western concepts do not often align with African perspectives; but this multidisciplinary methodology also shows that local residents and British colonial officials in Mombasa were aware of their differences and often attempted to translate their motivations to one another as they pursued goals that inevitably clashed. In addition, personally visiting the sites mentioned in the archives and consulting with residents who live there provides a textured view of strategies that indigenous communities have used to claim territory but which left no written artifacts.