Kenya safari Book

An excellent read for students of British colonialism and particularly East Africa. Meinertzhagen served as an officer in the King's African Rifles from 1902-1906 in British East Africa, later known as Kenya. At the time he was there white settlement was just beginning, the native tribes were still less than resigned to their status as a British colony and game was plentiful. Meinertzhagen, who would go on to become an outstanding intelligence officer in World War I, was a very intelligent and rather contradictory character. He was a naturalist. His diary has frequent lists of the animals he saw, as well as mention of plants. He was an ornithologist and would become one of the world experts on bird in East Africa. And he was a hunter who slaughtered animals at every opportunity. In fairness, the meat went to feed the native troops in his company and he was sending specimens back to the British Museum. He also was an early proponent of conservation and establishing game refuges.

As with the animals, so with the natives. Meinertzhagen believed that the natives had to be left in no confusion as to what would happen if they misbehaved (from the British colonialist point of view). When a British trader was tortured and murdered, Meinertzhagen ordered his company to slaughter the entire village, apparently with the approval of his superiors. Ironically, he later fell afoul of the Colonial Office when he attempted to capture the leader of the rebellious Nandi tribe, the Laibon (a sort of mix of political leader and witch doctor). Hearing from his spies among the tribe that the Laibon want to arrange a meeting in which Meinertzhagen would be ambushed, he concocted a plan in which the ambush would be turned against the Laibon, who would be either killed or captured. In the event, the Laibon was killed. Later rumors were spread that Meinertzhagen had acted in bad faith and to mollify the tribes they demanded his recall from Kenya. Three separate courts of inquiry cleared him of any misdoing, but he'd made a number of enemies who kept the rumors going. Meinertzhagen was very intelligent and held himself to a high standard in performing his duty, but as he admits in his diary he was often too ready to criticize others, including superiors, who didn't measure up to his standards. He had many admirers, but also more than a few enemies in the army and the colonial administration.

Meinertzhagen presciently foresaw that plans for white settlement in Kenya were doomed to end in conflict and was opposed to it. Rare among British colonialists, he saw that the African, whatever their "savage" state in the early 1900's, would become educated and once educated they'd never stand for second class status in what he recognized as their land. He correctly identified the Kikuyu as the most likely to rebel, as they were considered the most intelligent of the tribes. When the Mau Mau Rebellion broke out in the '50's it was primarily among the Kikuyu.