Independence
By the early 1960's, Britain’s political willingness to maintain Kenya as a colony was in decline and in 1962 the Lancaster House agreement set a date for Kenya’s independence. Realising minority rule like the Rhodesian and South African apartheid régimes were not possible after the Mau-Mau uprising, the majority of 60,000 white settlers looked for a way out. Along with Kenyan Asians, Europeans were given the choice of retaining their British passports and suffering a diminution in rights, or acquiring new Kenyan passports. Few chose to acquire citizenship, and many Europeans left the country. The World Bank led a willing-buyer-willing-seller scheme, known as the 'million acre' scheme that was largely financed by secret British subsidies. The scheme saw the redistribution of swathes of European owned land to the newly prosperous Kikuyu elite.
The remaining small minority of Europeans have mostly taken Kenyan citizenship. There were an estimated 35,000 white Kenyan citizens in Kenya as of 2009. There are also British expatriates who may be of any race; according to the BBC, they numbered at about 32,000 in 2006.
Read more about this topic: White People In Kenya
Famous quotes containing the word independence:
“We commonly say that the rich man can speak the truth, can afford honesty, can afford independence of opinion and action;—and that is the theory of nobility. But it is the rich man in a true sense, that is to say, not the man of large income and large expenditure, but solely the man whose outlay is less than his income and is steadily kept so.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gay capital [Paris].”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)