The Uganda Railway and the Fabrication of Kenya

Chapter 7 The Uganda Railway and the Fabrication of Kenya

Robert H. Clemm

The territory of what would become the British colony of Kenya was little regarded by Europeans during the mid-to-late 19th century. At that time, it served as little more than a barrier to cross to places more renowned and important. For explorers who wished to verify if the reports of a snow-capped mountain in Africa were true, it was simply a land to traverse on the way to Mount Kilimanjaro. For British officials in the aftermath of the Berlin Confer- ence of 1884–1885, it was a land necessary to possess not for its own intrinsic worth, but only as a means to stabilize “effective occupation” and to preserve British dominance. For officers of the Imperial British East Africa Company, it was an obstacle to surmount to gain access to the much richer lands of Ugan- da. The construction of the Uganda Railway, however, radically changed the perception, and, by extension, the nature and history of Kenya. Dr. Guilmartin, to whom this volume is dedicated, urged historians to recog- nize the importance of technology to our discipline generally and specifically in the realm of military history. His definition of technology as “any physical or mental tool created by a person or society for the purpose of problem solving” fits as far as the history of the Uganda Railway seems to suggest. The Uganda Railway was a piece of technology crafted to solve the joint political and eco- nomic concerns of the British Government in eastern Africa. In linking the coast firmly to Uganda it would solidify British control over a region contested by German colonial enthusiasts, and would ensure the prosperity of the region through the expected transport of cash crops to the coast. As much as the Uganda Railway seems to present yet another example of the importance of technology generally, and the railway specifically, to the process of imperialism, it goes well beyond that. The “Lunatic Express,” as the Uganda Railway was nicknamed, illustrates the power of technology to create and transform well in excess of our own intentions. While its creators simply wished to solve the technical question of linking important regions via a stable transportation network, the railway fundamentally transformed the land over which it crossed. The transformation went beyond that of the physical land- scape, which would be leveled and etched with rails and ties, and extended to the very understanding of what Kenya was. To return to Dr. Guilmartin’s definition, the Uganda Railway was designed to answer a particular problem, but

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ended up answering a problem none of the British imperialists had considered – what to do with Kenya? The Uganda Railway, therefore, is not simply the prototypical story of technology in the service of empire, but evidence of how technology can powerfully reshape our understanding of the world. As much as we believe technology is a tool to be utilized for our benefit, the Uganda Railway underscores how technology could just as equally reshape us in the process of being used. In the case of Kenya, as was recounted by later governor of the East African Protectorate Charles Elliot, “this line [the Uganda Railway] has literally created a country.”1 In an imperial context the role of the railway was self-evident in both its ideological and practical effects. The railway was not only a product of an in- dustrial Europe capable of projecting military force overseas, it also heralded the arrival of civilization in the lands which Europeans occupied. It is not sur- prising, therefore, to find many of the most rapturous colonial visions to be bound up intimately with a railway project. From French visions of a trans- Saharan railway to Cecil Rhodes’ belief that Britain should establish a “Cape- to-Cairo” line of colonies bound by a single railway, this piece of technology appeared integral to the colonial project itself.2 Beyond the fevered dreams of colonial enthusiasts, it seemed the practical import of the railway was equally self-evident. In colonial warfare during this period, where conflicts were as much a strug- gle with climate, disease, and logistics as they were against hostile indigenous peoples, the railway seemed the lynchpin of colonial conquest. As C. E. Call- well noted in his Small Wars, a seminal work on imperial combat during the period, wars in the colonial context were not:

the question of pushing forward the man, or the horse, or the gun, that has to be taken into account, so much as that of the provision of the nec- essaries of life for the troops when they have been pushed forward.3

1 Sir Charles Eliot, The East Africa Protectorate (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1966), 208. 2 The Frenchman Lionel Wiener declared “it is especially railroads that bring civilization be- hind them.” Donald Headrick, Tools of Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 194. For a general overview of the use of railways in Africa, including discussion of the Trans- Saharan railway, see Chapter 14 of the aforementioned work. 3 Colonel C.E. Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice (London: Harrison and Sons, 1906), 57. His assessment would form the basis of an entire chapter of his work entitled “The influence of the question of supply upon small wars and the extent to which it must govern the plan of operation.”