East Africa Royal Commission Report

Prepared in 1954 for the East Africa Royal Commission’s 1953–55 inquiry, these four maps examine Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyik...

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Prepared in 1954 for the East Africa Royal Commission’s 1953–55 inquiry, these four maps examine Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika at a moment when the Mau Mau uprising had exposed the urgency of land hunger and unequal tenure. They combine population density, rainfall reliability, tsetse infestation, transport and administrative boundaries with “alienated” settler land and African reserves. Two regional sheets test the prospects of obtaining 20 and 30 inches of annual rainfall; the detailed Kenya map starkly contrasts crowded African land units with lightly populated, high-potential European Highlands. Published with the Commission’s 1955 report, the maps reveal how colonial planners sought to identify land for agricultural development and resettlement—while inadvertently documenting the racialised geography and environmental constraints underlying anti-colonial unrest.

Prepared in 1954 for the East Africa Royal Commission’s 1953–55 inquiry, these four maps examine Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika at a moment when the Mau Mau uprising had exposed the urgency of land hunger and unequal tenure. They combine population density, rainfall reliability, tsetse infestation, transport and administrative boundaries with “alienated” settler land and African reserves. Two regional sheets test the prospects of obtaining 20 and 30 inches of annual rainfall; the detailed Kenya map starkly contrasts crowded African land units with lightly populated, high-potential European Highlands. Published with the Commission’s 1955 report, the maps reveal how colonial planners sought to identify land for agricultural development and resettlement—while inadvertently documenting the racialised geography and environmental constraints underlying anti-colonial unrest.

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