Cruelty and Empathy, Animals and Race in Colonial Kenya.

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BRETTL. SHADLE

Cruelty and Empathy, Animals and Race,in Colonial Kenya

Colonial Kenya was, by anyone's standards, suffused with violence and cruelty.Africans suffered conquest, the cane, and counterinsurgency. Indians enduredtheir share of bloodied noses at the hands of whites. While the European immi-grant community gave better than they receivedwithout admitting cruelty nomatter the barbarity of their actionsthey too believed themselves living amidstunconscionable cruelty. Mother nature, in her heartless way, oversaw a cruelrealm. Leopards seemed to have a particular taste for domestic dogs, oftensnatching them from front porches or even leaping through open windows fortheir innocent prey. Settler attempts to raise fowl often failed due to pitilesshawks or other predators. Whites were most repulsed bysiafu or army ants. Siafu

appeared, seemingly from nowhere, marching in a line a foot wide and yardslong, consuming any living thing in their path. Europeans recounted gruesomescenes of animals and even human infants killed and bodies picked clean bymaraudingsiafu.

Nothing could be done to civilize nature. Dogs could be kept out of harm'sway, and ashes could be spread at the perimeter of a house to divert siafu, butleopards could not change their spots, nor ants their ravenous marches. Otherparts of the African scene were potentially more amenable to change. Mostwhites sincerely felt a responsibility to civilize Africans. But slowly. It had takenBritons two thousand years since the Roman invasions to reach the pinnacle ofcivilization. Under white tutelage Africans would advance more quickly,although it would still be a centuries-long process. Moreover, too much changetoo quickly was ineffective, even dangerous. Africans would lose their old mor-ality and social structure without truly imbibing modernity. They would sliderapidly into anomie, amorality, and a savagery as yet unseen even in Africa.1

Author's note:Portions of this paper were originally presented at the African StudiesAssociation Conference, 2008; my thanks to Tom Spear and members of the audiencefor their comments. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewer for JSH and to members of

the Concerned Kenyan Writers who offered valuable feedback. Address correspondenceto Brett L. Shadle, Department of History, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and StateUniversity, Blacksburg, VA 24061-0117.

Journal of Social History(2012), pp. 120doi:10.1093/jsh/shr152 The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected].

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Some whites insisted that African customsexcision, women being bentnearly in half by loads of firewood, or the desertion of the sick and elderly in

the woods to die by exposure

could be understood as nothing but extremecruelty. But most Kenyan whites brushed aside such protests as the misguidedsquawking of those who did not understand the intricacies of African cultures,the ways in which each custom was necessary for the preservation of tribal integ-rity. Most could ignore female circumcision or forced marriage of girls as perhapsdistasteful but logical enough customs for peoples just emerging from barbarity.Under the civilizing influence of European rule, Africans eventually would seethe errors of their ways. In the meantime, such cultural oddities as circumcisiontruly hurt no one; even women did not protest their oppression.

Yet whites could not explain away all acts of violence by Africans.

According to whitesmissionaries, settlers, and colonial officials alikeAfricans acted with wanton cruelty to dumb beasts. Africans who regularlyinflicted unnecessary suffering on animals felt no empathy for their victims. Incontrast, Europeans, modern bourgeois individuals, abhorred suffering. Orrather, they abhorred unnecessary suffering. Suffering that had a positive resultwas not cruelty. Brutalization of animals was cruel: it served no logical purpose.2

Removing a young woman's clitoris held the tribe together; bludgeoning aharmless piglet to death contributed nothing to the world. Should the Africanwoman wish not to be circumcised she could speak out. Dumb beasts could onlysuffer in silence. They could not defend themselves nor make their wishes

known. Cruelty to animals was not an unfortunate custom at which one couldcluck one's tongue and move on.

Unlike any other aspect of African culturesave those, like the provisionof labor, that directly affected whitescruelty to animals demanded white inter-vention. Few if any whites argued against the conventional wisdom that Africantreatment of animals was cruel and had to be altered. None broke ranks or spokeout against the time and money spent to alleviate the suffering of dumb beasts.How to carry out this part of the civilizing process was less clear. Somehow,Africans had to be taught empathy for animals. This was an unusual position forKenya whites to adopt. To the best of my knowledge, missionaries never tried to

make patriarchs imagine how female circumcision might feel to their daughters,but rather used the discourses of civilization, Christianity, and health.3 CertainlyAfricans were never asked to put themselves in the place of an exasperatedwhite employer, to imagine how it would feel to never have plentiful, hard-working laborers. Black thieves were not asked to empathize with whites whosehouses they burgled: they instead would be taught more directly via the rod orthe prison walls not to repeat their actions. In fact, Africans were actively dis-couragedfrom imagining themselves as white.

Only via animals did whites try to inculcate empathy in African minds.Africans ought not to presume to feel what whites felt, but must learn to feelwhat animals felt. In the early years, Europeans believed Africans' humanity to

be so stunted that only crude measures could be effective. The whip was the pre-ferred method of preventing Africans from abusing animals. Perhaps making theAfrican physically suffer as his animal victim had suffered would create someprimitive equation between human and animal in the African's mind.

Whites acted with more subtlety later on. As time passed, more whitesappeared to be convinced that Africans had sufficient intellectual and

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emotional maturity to be amenable to words and images, rather than simply thelash. By the 1930s, whites acting under the aegis of the East African Society for

the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had added education to their strategies ofinculcating among Africans the need for kindness. Anthropomorphic dogs andbirds described their suffering in literature directed to Africans.4 Nonetheless,the commitment to rewarding cruelty with violence reared its head in times ofcrisis. When Mau Mau threatened the continuity of white rule, settlers quicklyreverted to the opinion that only violence could prevent cruelty.

In the context of colonial Kenya, I suggest, discourses surrounding crueltyto animals helped structure how whites related to Africans. As Halttunenexplains for the Anglo-American world, In the context of the bourgeois civi-lizing process, compassion and a reluctance to inflict pain became identified as

distinctivelycivilizedemotions, while cruelty was labeled assavageor barbarous.5

African cruelty to animals became one of the few areas in which whites trulytried to civilize Africans. By and large, whites hoped to retain distancesocial, emotional, and physicalbetween the races. More than we have hithertounderstood, whites felt compelled to bridge that distance to protect dumb

beasts. Yet the fact that Africans required civilization on this point providedincontrovertible evidence of African savagery. It justified white violence onAfrican bodies. It reinforced the imagined distance between white and black.

Anticruelty Sentiment in Britain

Although some of the eighteenth century Scottish philosophers voicedconcern over the treatment of animals, it would not be until the next centurythat more Britons took up anticruelty as a cause. As early as 1809 Lord Erskineintroduced into the House of Lords a bill dealing with cruelty to animals. TheSociety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded in 1824 andgiven a royal charter in 1840.6 Much like other reform movements of the time,the RSPCA's agenda and ideology were shot through with class bias. The poorand working classes required to be taught sobriety, self-control, and new notionsof the law, the body, and punishment; for some reformers, this civilizing project

including teaching them new attitudes toward animals. As Harrison puts it, theRSPCA aimed to civilize the lower orders. 7

As the century drew to a close, anticruelty activists had helped propelchanges in how many Britons thought about animals. In order to truly changeindividuals' treatment of animals required teaching them empathyallowingpeople, or forcing them, to place themselves in the situation of an abusedanimal. Once a person imagined himself or herself beaten, baited, or lashed, thetheory went, then that person became a convert to the anticruelty position. Thenovels and personal narratives that had been so important in inculcatingempathy in nineteenth-century Europeans, and which had played such animportant role in humanitarian movements such as abolitionism, helped theanticruelty movement as well. Individuals were encouraged to see animals, andto see the world through animals' eyes.8 Anthropomorphism became morecommon.9 Most important was Black Beauty, which put the reader into themind of a cruelly treated horse. Black Beauty became the bible of the RSPCAand similarly minded Britons (and Americans) and quickly went through multi-ple printings.10 Schoolchildren as well as adults imagined how a horse might

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view the world, how it silently sufferednot only physically, but emotionallyat the hands of brutal drivers.

This is not to say that Britons did not expect animals to be free of pain alto-gether. Sometimes lazy horses had to be whipped, and few dogs would haveescaped a swat or a kick. Lambs had to give their lives for the British table.Hunting was not only not cruel, but for many was a positive good for scienceand for proving manliness.11 Violence such as this had a purpose, however, andso long as it did not entail prolonged suffering it could be accepted.12 Anythingelse would be condemned as cruel. As one reformer put it at the turn of thecentury, Britons were ready to kill everything, but reluctant to torture any-thing.13 As compassion toward animals became more and more widelyaccepted, it also became a marker between civilized and savage. Civilized people

empathized with other people and animals. They did not inflict unnecessary suf-fering on other sentient beings.14 Those who did were outside the pale of civi-lized society.15

Anticruelty Sentiment and Settlers in Early Colonial Kenya

This was the world from which (most) Kenya whites had come.16 Theyshowed a particular attachment to their domestic pets. When Arnold Paicestepped off the boat at Mombasa in 1907, he saw fit to carry with him nothing

but a horse and an Irish Setter.17 By 1920 settlers were holding dog shows in

Nairobi, and the East African Standard soon began a regular column, KennelNotes.18 Some devout Christians even brought their dogs to church.19 TheSociety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1930 awarded its SilverMedal to Constable E. P. C. Thacker, for his courageous act of shimmyingdown a rope to rescue a dog from a 125 foot-deep well.20 Canines were not theonly animals to receive human attention and affection. One white woman'sadvice to her sister-settlers to avoid becoming discontented, listless, aimless,filled with shapeless moods was to cultivate gardens and Surround yourself with

petssuch as dogs and horses, but also wild animals.21 V. M. Carnegie's husbandkept geese on the farm, and although half were ganders, they ate tremendously,

and pecked his family's legs, he refused to allow any to be killed. He lovedthem,she wrote, with a blind devotion.22

As in Great Britain, some animals were meant to die for human benefitfood, clothing, or sportand humans sometimes had to inflict pain, but notexcessive or unnecessary pain.23 Beating or whipping an ox or donkey might benecessary if it were slow or stubborn. Stray dogs crowding the streets of Nairobiwere sent to the lethal chamberswhich was, in the opinion of the East AfricanStandard, a good place for them.24

Any violence beyond that which was strictly necessarythat was cruel.25

The desire to avoid suffering among wild animals was strong. White hunters

(and hunting was central to the colonial experience in Kenya) developed a par-ticular moral code that strove to avoid causing unnecessary suffering for theiranimal victims.26 Baroness Blixen experienced a great feeling of terror reflect-ing on the fate of a bushbuck which some African children were trying to sell:What, I thought, would become of the fawn in the hands of the captors whohad stood with it in the heat of the long day, and had held it up by its joinedlegs? On pain of dismissal, she sent out her servants in the dead of night to


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find the fawn.27 After losing several head of cattle to a lion, Alyse Simpson'shusband set a trap. The trap did its work, but the lion proved to be stronger

than expected. It jumped back out of the corral with the trap attached, trailingblood into the bush. Simpson and his Maasai herder tracked the lion but even-tually lost the trail: This troubled John for days, Simpson recalled, for hehated cruelty.28

Addressing Cruelty by Africans

In late 1910, a few local ladies established the League of Mercy to attendto the care and raising of European children amidst a teeming native popula-tion, as well as to address education, care of graves, and cruelty to animals.29

Within two years, the East African Society for the Prevention of Cruelty toAnimals (EASPCA) was formed under the auspices of the League; it became anindependent body in 1914. The Society drew on the elites of the colony: itsexecutive committee included ranking administrators (Hollis, Hobley,MacGregor Ross, Hinde) and leading settlers (Low, Wood), with Lord Delamereand the governor as patrons.30

The EASPCA had little difficulty gaining approval for legislation protectinganimals.31 Administrators themselves instigated the passing of new regulationsin 1915 on the transport of cattle by sea from Kismayu to other points on thecoast.32 The government in 1921 assented to an EASPCA recommendation to

outlaw the use of nose-rings and nose-ropes on oxen in certain provinces, whilea year later the commissioner of police proposed it be extended to the entirecolony.33

The EASPCA employed an investigator to seek out and bring to court per-petrators of cruelty. Police charged some as well, and individuals often broughtcases to the attention of officials.34 The Society's success rate in court was quitegood. In 1922 it succeeded in 11 of the 12 cases it brought.35 Complaints andcourt cases involved primarily the (Indian) owners and (African) operators of

beast of burdens. Lame animals were forced to work; brakes were improperlymaintained, pushing oxen downhill at dangerous speeds; bags were excessive

or were improperly loaded on donkeys' back; animals were whipped untilthey bled.36

The need to eliminate cruelty to animals, and the conclusion that onlysavages perpetrated such cruelty, was highlighted in a minor scandal in 1916.One Mr. Shillington brought to light the unnecessary cruelty with which ouroxen are slaughtered to-day in the Nairobi municipal butchery. A female col-umnist thought this a disgrace to our so-called civilization.37 Three menrunning for the Municipal Council vowed to alter the situation, for this is thetwentieth centurythe age of progress. For their voters' enlightenment, themen drew the connection between civilization (and race) and the treatment of

animals: It makes us ask the question, Are we white men? Or are we revertingto the manners and customs of the uncivilized savages, or the modern principlesof the unspeakable Hun?38 TheStandardplaced their letter under the heading,Municipal Torture Chamber.

Compared to their own civilized understanding of human-animal rela-tions, whites saw only savagery and cruelty in African practices. African crueltytoward animals was, among whites at least, legendary. Upon retiring from


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Kenya, settlers often had their domestic animals put down rather than leavethem in the care of Africans, while the wild ones they kept would be sent to a

zoo.

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As Lady Evelyn Cobbold put it,

The natives know no mercy or sympathyfor pain, whether among animals or humans,while Elspeth Huxley thought herfamily's Gikuyu workers were not deliberately cruel, but horribly callous.40

Charles Stigand came to a similar conclusion:

With animals the native is not cruel intentionally, but he is horribly brutaland callous. He would not lift a finger to help an animal in pain. On the otherhand, the thought of giving an animal pain would never occur to him unlessthe animal annoyed him. He ill-treats every animal he has to deal with, butonly through expediency.41

Others were less understanding. The Standard believed Africans poor treat-ment of animals arose from the inherent cruelty in the nature of the averagenative 42 All in all, the creeds of brutality and cruelty are still paramountamong the aboriginals.43

Rather than an act of resistance or of desperation by underfed and under-paid workers, impaling cattle was understood as a base act of cruelty. LordCranworth explained the practice of Gikuyu workers secretly killingwhites' oxen:

When a desire for meat seizes the Kikuyu herdsman and he thinks that thechance of detection is slight, he will select his opportunity and force a sharp-pointed stick or a cleft-stick with a stone in the cleft up the anus of an unfortu-nate animal, until the bowels are pierced. The stick is then broken off shortand left in. In a day or two the animal dies a death of frightful agony. The herdthen reports that a bullock has died of disease, and if the owner is young andignorant the carcase [sic] is thrown away, and the revels commence.44

In Kiambu, two Africans were charged with having killed three oxen owned bythe Highlands Transport Company, by forcing objects into either the throats orrectums of the animals. The men were convicted and sentenced to three years

in prison, 24 lashes, and a 100 rupee fine each.45 The magistrate ruled thatThere can be no doubt that whoever did this was prompted by sheer malignantintent to cause death and that by means the cruelty of which is beyonddescription.46

Newspapers and magistrates regularly illustrated acts of cruelty. One settlerin 1923 came upon Africans skinning hyraxes alivetheir pelts were worthmore that way than if taken from a dead animal. The editors of the KenyaObserverpredicted that fashionable settlers would rather give up their furs thanhelp to perpetuate this fiendish cruelty. Other writers deplored the barbaroustreatment meted out [by]heartless savages.47 One African, who used sticks

and stones to drive sheep to the slaughter, injuring three, received six monthsrigorous imprisonment in 1915. The magistrate remark[ed] that the accused wasguilty of abominable cruelty.48 That is, he had caused unnecessary sufferingwhilst driving the beasts to necessary suffering at the slaughterhouse.

The discourses of animal cruelty fed into a larger white discourse of corporalpunishment. The changing attitudes toward cruelty to animals in Britain hademerged along with, or slightly in advance of, new attitudes toward pain and


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violence among humans. In medieval Europe, pain had not always been consid-ered evil, but a constituent element of the human condition.49 With the rise

of capitalism, advances in science, and new ideas of state power, the inflictionof pain became less acceptable. Thus, for example, surgeons developed anesthe-sia to reduce pain. Abolitionists argued that central to the human condition wasthe right to be free of physical coercion and deliberately inflicted pain.50 Itwas no accident that slave narratives included scenes of masters viciouslycruellybeating slaves.51

The situation in Kenya was rather different. Whites there firmly believed inthe value of corporal punishment for Africans.52 Only violence, settlers andadministrators believed, could teach Africans the difference between right andwrong, to introduce Africans to the rules of a new racialized world, to force

Africans to respect whites. Corporal punishment also seemed to be the mostlogical means to prevent cruelty to animals. Teaching Africans empathy foranimals was, at this point, simply not considered. Violence could quickly breakAfricans of their habits of cruelty. Perhaps, incidentally, violence might beginto introduce some rudimentary sense of empathy to animals into Africans' souls.

In the Standardin 1910, A Wanderer called for new laws under which tocharge Africans who mistreated wagon oxen. And the only punishment whichwould be likely to be of any avail, he instructed, would be flogging.53 Whentold of a cook who poisoned his employer's dogs, Margaret Collyer expressed inher Kennel Notes column a sincere hope that he was marched off to the

nearest D[istrict] C[ommissioner] and received the hiding that he deserved. 54

State officials sometimes agreed. Magistrate Logan sentenced an African to tenstrokes for caning an ox and blinding it. The convicted man asked for a fine, towhich Logan replied, I shall not fine you but have you hit, perhaps it will teachyou not to be so cruel to animals in the future.55 The guilty man's lesson:inflicting senseless suffering on animals directly, inevitably, resulted in sufferingto oneself. Wanderer, Collyer, and Logan did not advance reasoning or thecivilized emotion of empathy as a solution to cruelty. Only violence could shapeAfricans' actions.

Although A Wanderer asked for legal change, he also confided that

Many natives have been thrashed on the quiet for cruelty to animals. C. T.Todd stopped a man (presumably an African) from lashing hell and fury out of[some] unfortunate oxen then turned and gave the driver a dose of his ownmedicine.56 Similarly, one settler woman, M. H. Hamilton, recalled that thenearest [she] ever came to killing anything was after having witnessed anAfrican worker intentionally hitting a cow with a bucket, blinding the beast.He was twice my size, she wrote, but when like lightening, I hurled myselfupon him, he came crashing to the ground. Had not the headboy forciblydragged me off, I would have bashed his brains out on the stones I was so wildwith fury.57 V. M. Carnegie discovered that her African servant had blinded a

sparrow and tied it down in circle of snares in order to attract larger prey.Barbarity of this sort, she wrote, makes one's blood boil to such a pitch thatit is difficult to keep a sense of proportion. The worker would have to be fired,

but at the back of my mind I felt that more important still was to bring hiscruelty home to him. She strongly considered violence, but ultimately (andsomewhat reluctantly) decided against it. The African was too base for even the


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lash to work. With such a callous creature, she wondered, would physicalpunishment be of much use?58

The case of Captain H. M. Harries and his herder Kamauga wa Njoro illus-trates the confluence of ideas about violence toward Africans and towardanimals. On June 6, 1920, Harries came upon a dead pig, and then spottedKamauga (deaf, mute, and possibly mentally handicapped) beating another. Theherdsman fled into the bush, but the next day Harries had him brought forward,and proceded to beat him.59 Harries claimed to have inflicted a relatively minor

beating, but Kiarie wa Njoroanother worker who, under threat of a beating,held down his brother Kamaugahad a different story. The beating lasted anhour, Kiarie explained at Harries's trial, during which time the white maninflicted 100 strokes over Kamauga's head and body.60 Kamauga ended up in

the hospital for five weeks, unable to stand unassisted. The medical officer whotreated him concluded that the beating was a severe beatingand the hurt wasgrievous.61

During his trial, Harries admitted only the offence of simple hurt (since, ashis lawyer noted, in law any beating however slight is an offence). After fiveminutes, the white jury returned a verdict of guilty on that count, but not guiltyon the more serious charge of grievous hurt. Moreover, the jury added the riderthat Harries had acted under intense provocation.62 In passing judgment ofthree months rigorous imprisonment, Justice Sheridan regret[ed] very muchthat he could not follow the jury's rider, but that Harries's punishment had to

be severe enough to end immoderate and excessive acts of beating such as tookplace in this case.63 TheStandardreported that the sentence was received by acrowded court with consternation and amazement, and later noted that thegreatest indignation prevails [in Nakuru] over the case.64 The outraged jurymenthemselves sent a letter to the registrar of the Court of Appeal protestingSheridan's sentence.65

Harries himself justified his actions, and those of other settlers as well, in aletter to the Standard. I trust you will print this letter, he wrote, in order toshow that British settlers do not flog a native for nothing but only, as expressed

by the jury in their verdict and rider guilty of simple hurt under extreme provoca-

tion[;] neither would the district express great indignation at the sentence hadthe boy's offence been a trivial one. Harries did not deny the beating, butinstead argued that Kamauga's cruelty to the animals required violence, as pun-ishment and as deterrent: as one witness stated, Harries had said, I will beatKamiuga because he has beaten pigs.66 In a letter to the Standard, M. G. C.

believed Harries's sentence particularly unjust, since had the incident takenplace in Britain the employer might have been fined twenty shillings, while theSociety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would have taken out a caseagainst the herder.67 Physical violence toward Africans was fully justifiednecessaryto guide Africans toward civilized treatment of animals.

Animal Cruelty in Late Colonial Kenya

White attitudes towards animals had changed little by the 1950s.Attachment to domestic pets continued. Nineteen-fifty saw the first Children'sand Pets' Day at All Saints Cathedral, to which police dog Jock received aspecial invitation.68 Settlers fleeing Kenya during Mau Mau and at


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independence continued to have their pets put down.69 At least among govern-ment officials and members of the EASPCA, however, policies and attitudes

towards Africans had altered. Overt racism had declined. Although whites didnot doubt their superiority and right to rule, the conviction that Africans werepure savages was not so readily spoken. While still convinced that Africanstreated animals cruelly, a consensus was building that this resulted from lack ofeducation or information, rather than savagery. Confidence in elite Africans'abilities was such that African-run courts gained authority to hear cruelty toanimal cases in 1950.70

The EASPCA began to reach out to Africans, teaching and civilizingthem instead of simply condemning them. By the mid-1930s some discussionwas underway on the possibility of producing Swahili-language pamphlets,

although the first was not published until the 1950s.71

In 1945 an Africansection of the Society was formed, which could claim 4000 members by 1951,and 6500 by 1953.72 An African man, Njoroge Kiania, was hired on as a clerk/inspector; the EASPCA praised him for his work uncovering cruelty byAfricans, Indians, and whites alike.73 Mrs. F.L. Lyons, president of the society in1956, thought that the more advanced and educated Africans should guidethe benighted rural folk in humane treatment, care and kindness. It is, shepontificated, only by example and education in animal welfare that the darkveil of ignorance will be lifted and kindness will filter through.74

Indeed, the society had consciously undertaken in an earnest endeavour to

teach the rudiments of kindness to animals to the indigenous population.75

In1952 the African section of the EASPCA issued a booklet in Swahili, Utunzajiwa Wanyama[Care of Animals], and the society distributed it gratis to all districtcommissioners and police stations, with extra copies for sale at fifty cents.76 The

booklet, with an introduction by E. Macharia Kang'ethe, Clerk of the AfricanSection, employed typical strategies. Just as activists had done in Britain in the19th century, the authors of the pamphlet strove to instill empathy in readers byasking them to visualize themselves as abused animals. The golden rule was to

be applied to animals: Tafadhali watendee ndege wote kama vile wewe mwenyeweungependa kutendwe vema (Please, treat all birds the way you yourself would

like to be treated).77 Francis K. Mithori, a society member, contributed(in English) Kindness to Animals, in which he exhorted Africans to endcruelty. We cannot excuse our cruelty on the grounds of thoughtlessness, hewrote, for It is our DUTY to think, and noone [sic] who cannot enter into thefeelings of an animal and sympathise with it in its weakness and helplessnessshould be allowed to own one. Indeed, cruelty to animals is almost morewicked than cruelty to men, simply because the animals and birds are helplessand dumb.78 In the same way that Black Beauty allowed readers to view theworld through the eyes of an abused horse, the pamphlet presented variousanimals speaking directly to the reader, explaining how they wished to be

treated. Please feed us like friends, the dog begged, because we love humansand guard your houses at night.79 Africans were now being taught to feelempathy, rather than only having that sense beaten into them.

Despite this reaching out to Africans, much work remained to be done. In1946, the Legislative Council appointed a select committee on cruelty toanimals, charged with examining the current situation and proposing new legis-lation. It found little to be pleased with in the colony. Ritual slaughter of beasts


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for Jewish and Muslim consumption, if not in and of itself cruel, was at least pre-ceded by cruel handling of cattle (a point disputed by three Muslims on the

committee).

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Africans often neglected their dogs, donkeys were overburdened,poultry were transported improperly, Mombasa dairies were in deplorablecon-dition. The committee recommended new legislation (although the Mau Maurebellion pushed such changes to the back burner) and better enforcement ofexisting laws.81 In the end, however, education was the best route to change:We recommend, therefore, that propaganda in the vernacular, both over thewireless and in the press, should be employed to enlighten the ignorance, whichon account of callousness and indifference, is the cause of much cruelty toanimals.82 Africans were cursed with ignorance rather than the inherentcruelty of a savage.

As whites spoke more of educating Africans, the state and the EASPCAbecame increasingly willing to criticize members of their own race for behavingcruelly to animals. The collection and export of African fauna for overseas zoo,if not done properly, could lead to much suffering.83 In fact, among the worstoffenders in the treatment of wild animals was one Carr Hartley of Nairobi. InAugust, 1957, Mr. and Mrs. Roberts and friends visited Hartley's farm, presum-ably to view animals he kept there; Hartley and his sons were not present.84

According to the Roberts, African workers collected some live puppies andtossed them into a leopard's cage. The puppies were quickly devoured, whiletheir mother whined and moaned outside. When Mrs. Roberts remonstrated

with the African, the African said it was the custom and his employer's instruc-tion. She waited some months before reporting to the authorities, hesitating toplace her neighbor in legal trouble.85 Veterinary officers were dispatched toinspect Hartley's property. There they found two dead monkeys lying amongstseven live ones, which were forced to sit in their own filth and suffereduntended wounds. The officials concluded that Hartley may not have beendirectly responsible for these conditions, as he would appear to have left thecare of the monkeys to a crude African staff, with apparently little supervi-sion.86 Nonetheless, although Africans had left the deceased monkeys in thecage, it was Hartelywho, as a white man, must have understood animals'

needs and should have been able to empathize with the animalswho was tar-geted with investigation.87 Due to unexplained delays circulating paperwork inthe government bureaucracies, Hartely was saved from having charges preferredagainst him. Nonetheless, the (incensed) crown counsel noted that This was aserious case of cruelty but I am confident that in future Carr Hartley's activitieswill be closely watched.88

Carr Hartley was cruel and failed in his duty to supervise (and, presumably,lift the veil of ignorance from around) Africans, and he had probably engaged incriminal acts, but no one thought to suggest he was a savage. Africans by nowgenerally escaped such accusations as well. But in the peculiar circumstances of

Mau Mau, when Gikuyu appeared to have discarded their thin veneer of civili-zation and reverted to their old way, whites returned to the trope of Africancruelty to animals as evidence of African savagery. Mau Mau threatened thecontinuity of colonial rule and white settlement in Kenya as nothing had

before. Settlers and colonial officials alike constantly harped on the bestiality ofMau Mau. Of course, much of these accusations had their origins in white imag-inations. Some of them, whites accepted as truth. Others were used for anti-Mau


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Mau propaganda in the West. Among the alleged acts of barbarity: wantonslaughter of innocent men, women, and children; the use of menstrual blood in

oathing ceremonies; sexual perversions; and cruelty to animals.

89

One of the colonial government's most gruesome tools was The Mau Mauin Kenya, a 47-page pamphlet issued in Britain in 1954.90 Along with the usualtext describing massacres, unscrupulous politicians, and conniving witchdoctorswere photographs of dead Africans. A dead woman and child. A policeman,eyes open but unseeing. A mutilated body, one of the hundred Kikuyu reducedto anonymity and death by Mau Mau in the Lari massacre. Yet the Kenyapublic relations office apparently thought that displaying African corpses wouldnot be sufficient to convince the British public of Mau Mau's savagery. Crueltyto animals would bolster the argument. Thus other photos included a cat

hanged from a tree branch (Mau Mau warning: This will happen to you), apile of dead cattle, and another beast standing but hamstrung (Dumb creaturesare not immune).91 Perhaps most telling are two photos that share a singlecaption. In the background of one is a long wooden fence clearly incapable ofkeeping Mau Mau at bayand in the left foreground lies a charred human

body, face down, anonymous, the cause of death unclear. In the other photo theupper body and head of a dead cow fill the image, machete wounds clearlyvisible, its eyes open, and its severed tail placed, incongruously, near its head.The caption: Human beings and animals, both victims of Mau Mau terror. 92

Settler memoirs reveal that disgust at the slaughter of animals was not

simply a matter of propaganda. In her diary, E. C. Palmes noted a Mau Mau raidon a neighbor's farm. Three head of cattle had been taken, and a note was lefton the fence: Bwana an honourable gentleman, very sorry but must havemeat. While the theft was bad enough, It was the thought of those beautiful

beasts being slaughtered that hurt, for the African had no idea of humanekilling, in fact the cruelty and mutilation they perpetrate needs seeing to be

believed.93 Her own farm later suffered a similar theft, and again the fate of heranimals bothered her more than their loss: I shall not sleep tonight, thinking ofthe torture these savages may be performing on our cattle.94 After an ox wasstolen, she and her husband decided to sell off their remaining three head rather

than sentence them to horrible deathsat the hands of Mau Mau.95Cruelty to animals during Mau Mau again gave settlers the opportunity to

insist upon corporal punishment on Africans. Mau Mau seemed to demandextreme violence. The fighters had entered a primeval state of mind that couldnot be reasoned with. The state took more extreme measures to put down therebellion, while settlers bayed for blood. Mau Mau fighters were certainly sodepraved that they could not respond to education and empathy. Electedmember Humphrey Slade in the Legislative Council called for increased use ofcorporal punishment, including on those guilty of maiming animals.96 His col-league S. V. Cooke made the link clearer still: People who take to the sword

must perish by the sword, and they who take to violence, corporal or otherwise,must receive the same treatment, particularly for mutilating animals. I advocatecorporal punishment, even the cat-of-nine-tails. Mau Mau were savages, asevidenced by their treatment of animals, and the state (and settlers) couldshouldrely on violence to enlightenthem.97


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Conclusion

This article focuses only on whites' discourses on Africans, on cruelty, onteaching empathy. This is, of course, only part of the story. Much more needs tobe known about African ideas about animals and definitions of cruelty.Certainly, theirs differed from those of the European immigrant community. Buthow did Africans make sense of whites' queer attachment to dogs and child-likejoy at slaughtering lions?98 Who were the Africans who joined the EASPCA,and what were their motivations?99 Much profit could also be had throughresearch into the other major immigrant community, South Asians, who hadtheir own sets of ideas about animals. More research in these areas could tell usmuch about notions of animals, of cruelty, and how members of the various

racial communities viewed one another.The story traced here continues to resonate. Recalling the tortured historyof colonial Kenya, Ngug~wa Thiong'o in 1981 cut to the heart of the intimateconnection between animals, race, and violence:

To the settlers, dogs ranked infinitely higher than Kenyans; and Kenyans wereeither children (to be paternalistically loved but not appreciated, like dogs) ormindless scoundrels (to be whipped or killed). The settlers' real love was fordogs and puppies.100

Echoes of such attitudes can still be heard. Crisscrossing Africa in 2008, famed

Trinidadian author V. S. Naipaul undertook an anachronistic expedition insearch of the heart of African religious beliefs.101 Amongst his various patroniz-ing and disparaging (and often racist) comments on modern Africa,102 herepeatedly bemoans the fate of the animals he encounters. He stops in IvoryCoast. The land is full of cruelty, which is hard for the visitor to bear. [Cattleshipped from far to the north,] still with dignity, await their destiny in the smellof death together with the beautiful goats and sheep assembled for killing.This lack of empathy for animals has stunted Africans' moral development:When sights like this meet the eyes of simple people every day there can be noidea of humanity, no idea of grandeur.103 Touring an emir's palace in Nigeria,he comes upon a hungry, perhaps orphaned, kitten crying. This littletragedy, Naipaul recalls, and my own helplessness, cast a shadow over the restof my visit to the palace 104 Like whites in colonial Kenya, Naipaul experien-ces Africa and Africans through the treatment of animals. Had he visited fifty orone hundred years before, he would not have felt himself helpless.

Endnotes

1. My understanding of white settlement and official thinking in Kenya draws in part on

a very rich historiography. See, for example, Theodore Natsoulas, Harold G. Roberston:An Editor's Reversal from Settler Critic to Ally in Kenya, 192223, International Journalof African Historical Studies 5 (1972): 61028; Paul van Zwanenberg, Kenya's PrimitiveColonial Capitalism: The Economic Weakness of Kenya's Settlers up to 1940, Canadian

Journal of African Studies 9 (1975): 27792; Christopher P. You, The Threat of SettlerRebellion and the Imperial Predicament: The Denial of Indian Rights in Kenya, 1923, Canadian Journal of History 12 (1977): 34760; Dane Kennedy, Islands of White: SettlerSociety and Culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 18901939 (Durham, 1987); Bruce


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Berman, Control and Crisis in Colonial Kenya: The dialectic of domination (Athens, Ohio,1990); C. J. Duder, An Army of One's Own: The Politics of the Kenya Defence Force,Canadian Journal of African Studies 25 (1991): 20725; idem, Men of the Officer Class:

The Participants in the 1919 Soldier Settlement Scheme in Kenya, African Affairs 92(1993): 6987; C. J. D. Duder and C. P. You, Paice's Place: Race and Politics in

Nanyuki District, Kenya, in the 1920s, African Affairs 93 (1994): 25378; DavidM. Anderson, Sexual Threat and Settler Society: Black Perils in Kenya, c. 190730,

Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History38 (2010): 4774; John Lonsdale, Kenya:Home Country and African Frontier, in ed. Robert Bickers, Settlers and Expatriates:Britons over the Seas (Oxford, 2010). For more popular histories of white settlement, seeErrol Trzebinski, The Kenya Pioneers (New York, 1985); C. S. Nicholls, Red Strangers:The White Tribe of Kenya(London, 2005).

2. The literature in the new field of Animal Studies is burgeoning. Those which were of

particular help in this article: James Turner, Reckoning with the Beast: Animals, Pain, andHumanity in the Victorian Mind (Baltimore and London, 1980); Robert Darnton, TheGreat Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York, 1984), ch.2;Carol Lansbury, The Old Brown Dog: Women, Workers, and Vivisection in EdwardianEngland(Madison,Wisconsin, 1985); Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate: The English andOther Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, MA, 1987); Hilda Kean, Animal Rights:Political and Social Change in Britain since 1800 (London, 1998); Molly H. Mullin,Mirrors and Windows: Sociocultural Studies of Human-Animal Relationships, AnnualReview of Anthropology 28 (1999): 20124; Mary J. Henninger-Voss, ed., Animals inHuman Histories: The Mirror of Nature and Culture (Rochester, NY, 2002); Harriet Ritvo,History and Animal Studies,Society and Animals10 (2002): 4036; Kathleen Kete, ed.,

A Cultural History of Animals in the Age of Empire (New York, 2007); DavidA. H. Wilson, Racial Prejudice and the Performing Animals Controversy in EarlyTwentieth-Century Britain, Society and Animals 17 (2009): 14965. Africanists are atthe beginning stages of adding to this literature, exploring how animal-human relationsin African colonial contexts replicate and differ from those in Europe. For recent works,see T. C. McCaskie, People and Animals: Constru(ct)ing the Asante Experience,

Africa62 (1992): 22147; Nancy Jacobs, The Great Bophuthatswana Donkey Massacre:Discourse on the Ass and the Politics of Class and Grass, American Historical Review 106(2001): 485507; Sandra Swart, Riding High: Horses, Power and Settler Society,c. 16541840, Kronos 29 (2003): 4763; Albert Grundlingh, Gone to the Dogs: TheCultural Politics of Gamblingthe Rise and Fall of British Greyhound Racing on theWitwatersrand, 19321949, South African Historical Journal 48 (2003): 17489; Lancevan Sittert, Bringing in the Wild: The Commodification of Wild Animals in the CapeColony/Province, c. 18501950, Journal of African History 46 (2005): 26991; EdwardL. Steinhart,Black Poachers, Whites Hunters: A Social History of Hunting in Colonial Kenya(Oxford, 2006); Lance van Sittert and Sandra Swart, eds., Canis Africanis: A Dog Historyof Southern Africa(Leiden, 2008).

3. Although it would be fruitful to discover how missionaries taught the Golden Ruleand the suffering of Jesus.

4. This opens a much wider theme, one that cannot be considered here, on white

attempts

or non-attempts

to understand African ideas of pain and suffering. As Scarryhas argued for the West, pain is an intensely personal emotion, and one immensely diffi-cult to articulate (Elaine Scarry,The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World[New York, 1985]). This is, obviously, even more true of animals than humans. Whitesrarely attempted to inquire into African ideas of pain and suffering, but created their owndiscourses about Africans. Settlers and missionaries who doctored Africans regularly com-mented on their stoicism in the face of physical pain. Many whites believed in the virtueof corporal punishment for Africans, but argued that Africans' ability to withstand pain


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required more lashes than might be necessary for a member of another race. Scholarscould do more to understand African ideas of pain, especially given its centrality in somany rites of passage. For thoughts along these lines, see Paul S. Landau, Explaining

Surgical Evangelism in Colonial Southern Africa: Teeth, Pain and Faith, Journal ofAfrican History37 (1996): 26181.

5. Karen Halttunen, Humanitarianism and the Pornography of Pain in Anglo-AmericanCulture, American Historical Review 100 (1995): 30334, quotes from 3034. See alsoThomas L. Haskell, Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility,

American Historical Review, Part 1, 90 (1985): 33961, Part 2, 90 (1985): 54766.

6. Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 127; Arthur W. Moss, Valiant Crusade: The History of theR.S.P.C.A. (London, 1961).

7. Brian Harrison, Animals and the State in Nineteenth-Century England, The English

Historical Review88 (1973): 786820, quote from 815. See also Lansbury, The Old BrownDog, 328; Turner, Reckoning with the Beast, 4558; Ritvo, Animal Estate; Kathleen Kete,Animals and Human Empire,in Kete, ed., Cultural History of Animals; Moira Ferguson,

Animal Advocacy and Englishwomen, 17801900 (Ann Arbor, 1998); Wilson, RacialPrejudice. For comparison, Katherine C. Grier, The Eden of Home: ChangingUnderstandings of Cruelty and Kindness to Animals in Middle-Class AmericanHouseholds, 18201900, in Henninger-Voss, ed.,Animals in Human Histories.

8. Hilda Kean, The Moment of Greyfriars Bobby: The Changing Cultural Position ofAnimals, 18001920,in Kete, ed.,Cultural History of Animals, 29.

9. Turner,Reckoning with the Beast, 71.

10. Lansbury,Old Brown Dog, 64.

11. John M. MacKenzie, The Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation and BritishImperialism (Manchester, 1988); J.A. Mangan and C. McKenzie, Martial Masculinity inTransition: The Imperial Officer-Hunter and the Rise of a Conservation Ethic,International Journal of the History of Sport25 (2008): 124373.

12. Turner,Reckoning with the Beast, 73. On notions of necessary versus unnecessary pain,and the relationship to notions of cruelty to humans, see Talal Asad, On Torture, orCruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment, in Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, andMargaret Lock, eds., Social Suffering(Berkeley, 1997).

13. S.V. Bensusan, quoted in Wilson, Racial Prejudice,154.

14. Ritvo,Animal Estate, 12732; Ferguson,Animal Advocacy and Englishwomen, 121.

15. Ferguson, Animal Advocacy and Englishwomen; Turner, Reckoning with the Beast, 69;Dan Weinbren, Against All Cruelty: The Humanitarian League, 18911919, HistoryWorkshop38 (1994): 86105.

16. In this paper I deal primarily with settlers who came from Britain or elsewhere inEurope, and English-speaking South Africans. I thus by and large leave out Afrikaaners(Dutch in Kenyan parlance) who emigrated from South Africa. As a primarily ruralpopulation with a peculiar cultural history, their thoughts towards animals were perhaps

closer to those of African pastoralists than those of fellow whites. Moreover, the sourcesfor this paperpublished and unpublished memoirs and the main settler paperstend to

be dominated by those who came directly from Europe and English-speakers from SouthAfrica.

17. A. Paice, Some notes on the old days in Kenya, 1956. Kenya National Archive(KNA): MSS 104/1. Lord Delamere had his favorite dog. Times of East Africa, Jan. 20,1906. See also Fragments, The Critic, March 10, 1923; Somerset Playne (compiler),


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F. Holderness Gale (editor),East Africa (British): Its History, People, Commerce, Industries,and Resources(London, 1909).

18. To-Day's Dog Show, East African Standard(EAS), Sep. 25, 1920. On the origin ofdog shows in England, see Ritvo, Animal Estate.

19. Under the Standard Clock,EAS, Aug. 21, 1923.

20. President, EASPCA, to Private Secretary, Ag. Governor, Oct. 18, 1930, KNA: GH7/21. The death of dogs tugged at whites' heartstrings. Reverend Gogarty in 1920 relatedthe story of a dog having been eaten by a boa constrictor, which he mourned as atragedy. Rev. H. A. Gogarty, In the Land of the Kikuyus (Dublin, 1920): 76. Etta Close,an American travelling through Kenya, witnessed another tragedy: a dog attacked andnearly killed a colubus monkey, after which her guide Mr. Trout shot it. Close, A Woman

Alone in Kenya, Uganda, and the Belgian Congo (London, 1924): 154. Margaret Collyer,

author of Kennel Notes, expressed sympathy for Mrs. Sladen, who was parted from adelightful friend and protector when a leopard ate her pet Airedale. EAS, Aug. 25,1923, Supplement, n.p.

21. White Women in the Tropics,East Africa, Dec. 31, 1925.

22. V. M. Carnegie, A Kenyan Farm Diary (Edinburgh and London, 1930): 878. Seealso Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa(New York, 1985 [1938]): 7083; Things We Want toKnow,The Critic, Sep. 2, 1922.

23. Even then, some hesitated to slaughter farm animals. Carnegie called the killing ofher turkey for Christmas dinner an execution.Carnegie,Kenyan Farm Diary, 61.

24. Occasional Notes, EAS, Sep. 2, 1916; Things We Want to Know, The Critic,March 31, 1923. See also, for example, the case of an ox-cart driver who lashed an ox tillit bled, and twisted its tail until it nearly snapped. It was, according to both the accusedand the Veterinary Officer giving evidence, a lazy beast. Doorly, who heard the case inPolice Court, remarked that he was at a loss to understand, generally speaking, howoxen were to be driven if they were not beaten, and in giving judgment he said: I findthat cruel measures were used in trying to make the ox go, but on the evidence I aminclined to sympathise with the driver's difficulty. He levied a mere four shilling fine.Under the Standard Clock, EAS, July 1, 1922. See also the comments of MagistrateLogan, in Native Convicted of Cruelty, EAS, Jan. 25, 1913. On the putting down ofstrays, see Occasional Notes, EAS, Sep. 2, 1916. In later years, however, some

Nairobians apparently attempted to interfere with the work of the municipal dog-catchers, who thus had to shift their sweeps to the early morning hours. Echoes of theWeek, EAS, May 13, 1922. For comparisons with South Africa, see Lance van Sittert,Class and Canicide in Little Bess: The 1893 Port Elizabeth rabies epidemic, andKirsten McKenzie, Dogs and the public sphere: the ordering of social space in early 19th

century Cape Town,both in van Sittert and Swart, eds., Canis Africanus.

25. The 1913 ordinance that set out new rules against cruelty to animals defined crueltyas unnecessary suffering. Judges and magistrates were instructed to follow JudgeHawkins in Ford v. Wiley, who determined that pain and suffering inflicted on ananimal without necessity, or, in other words, without good reason, was cruel. Supreme

Court of Kenya, circular to magistrates 27 of 1942, KNA: AG 31/8.

26. See, for example, the comments of Captain Ritchie, Minutes of June 15, 1927,meeting of Coast African Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, KNA: BV 5/5;The Junior Branch of the East African Society for the Prevention of Cruelty toAnimals (Nairobi: Jnr. Branch, EASPCA, 1927), 34, KNA: GH 7/21; GameSlaughter by Motor Car, or, A Western Yankee in Africa, Kenya Observer (KO), Sep.12, 1923; H. A. C. Wilson, A British Borderline: Service and Sport in Equatoria(London,


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1913): 149, 21820. On the culture of white hunting more generally, see Steinhart, BlackPoachers, Whites Hunters.

27. Dinesen,Out of Africa, 70-1.28. Simpson,Land that Never Was, 200. Again, this points to an essential part of definingcruelty. The infliction of pain for a purposeto stop a lion from stealing cattlewasacceptable, while violence that served no apparent purpose, or went beyond a certainlinea lion with a paw caught in a metal trap for several dayswas cruel. Similarly,Magistrate Logan convicted an African of cruelty to an animal for having brutally beatena mule. Logan pointed out that the African's actions were unnecessary, since the mulewas not acting stubbornly at the time. That is, beating a stubborn mule was not cruel.Native Convicted of Cruelty,EAS, Jan. 25, 1913.

29. League of Mercy, EAS, Oct. 4, 1910; League of Mercy, EAS, Dec. 28, 1910. It is

likely that this League was affiliated with, or inspired by, the international League ofMercy active in moral issues. See Ashwini Tambe, The Elusive Ingenue: ATransnational Feminist Analysis of European Prostitution in Colonial Bombay, Genderand Society19 (2005): 16079; Ashwini Tambe, personal communication, May 19, 2010.

30. Cruelty to Animals, EAS, Oct. 18, 1913; Dumb Animals, EAS, Jan. 6, 1914;Dumb Animals,EAS, Jan. 10, 1914.

31. The one significant exception was the Nairobi Municipal Council's reaction to anEASPCA proposal that two-oxen carts have a leader and a driver, like four-oxen carts.TheStandardreported that Several councilors thought the suggestion ridiculous, and theidea was turned down. Municipal notes,EAS, Sept. 11, 1922.

32. The Cruelty to Animals at Sea Rules, 1915; Ag. Solicitor General, Opinion, Aug.20, 1918, KNA: AG 31/10, and see also other letters in this file and in AG 31/6.

33. The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Amendment) Ordinance, 1921;Commissioner of Police to Colonial Secretary, Nov. 18, 1924, KNA: AG 31/6. It hadapplied to Nairobi Township since 1918. Municipal Matters,EAS, June 8, 1918.

34. On the inspector, see EASPCA,EAS, Feb. 2, 1923.

35. EASPCA,EAS, Feb. 2, 1923.

36. See, for example, H. V.,letter to ed., and Cruelty to Animals,both in EAS, Oct.

18, 1913; B. S. A. letter to ed., EAS, May 14, 1914; A Trooper from the South andN. Thompson, letters to ed., EAS, July 15, 1916; on African workers' mistreatment ofgovernment animals, see Municipal Oxen, EAS, Jan. 19, 1922. Although in writing,Europeans directed most of their wrath at Africans (brutal and ignorant, nigger [ox-cart]drivers, opined Alfred Williams [letter to ed., EAS, Oct. 26, 1912]), Indians and fellowwhites were not immune from attack and prosecution. Indians, either as owners of ill ormistreated animals worked by African employees, or driving the beasts themselves,appeared in court on a semi-regular basis. Whites too might be charged with cruelty,although generally only when their African employees had mistreated animals.

37. Woman's World,EAS, Oct. 7, 1916.

38. Municipal Committee, EAS, Oct. 23, 1916; Municipal Torture Chamber, letterto ed. by Sydney Fichat, Harold Henderson, and Fred Tate,EAS, Dec. 30, 1916. See alsoSlaughter House Methods, EAS, Jan. 6, 1917; Municipal Committee, andShillington, letter to ed., both in EAS, Jan. 27, 1917; Another Responsible Critic,letter to ed., EAS, March 17, 1917.

39. M. H. Hamilton, Turn the Hour: A Tale of Life in Colonial Kenya(Sussex, 1991): 283;Carnegie, Kenyan Farm Diary, 48. Failed farmer Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) very nearly


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had her dogs and horses shot when she returned to Europe, but finally gave them tofriends and neighbors. Dinesen, Out of Africa, 377. Those going to Britain would nothave been able to bring their pets with them due to rabies quarantine, meaning that the

choice was to surrender their pets to African cruelty or put them down.

40. Lady Evelyn Cobbold, Kenya: The Land of Illusion (London, 1935): 98; ElspethHuxley, Flame Trees of Thika(New York, 1982 [1959]): 129. See also Dinesen, Out of

Africa, 2656; W. S. Bromhed, Self Determination,EAS, April 27, 1918.

41. C. H. Stigand, The Land of Zinj: Being an Account of British East Africa, Its AncientHistory and Present Inhabitants(New York, 1913): 302. On the same page, Stigand claimsto have known only one African who was genuinely kind to animals.Elsewhere, he dis-tinguished the white hunter from the African: the latter's hunting instinct is derivedfrom a love of meat and a lust of killing [rather] than from any sporting feeling. Quotedin Steinhart,Black Poachers, 75. See also letter to ed., EAS, Nov. 2, 1912; M. W. Dobbs,Recollections of Kenya, 19061931, Rhodes House Library, Oxford University [RH]:MSS Afr. s. 504.

42. Occasional Notes,EAS, May 17, 1913.

43. Coddling the Natives, EAS, March 11, 1914. See also Natives and Poison, EAS,Aug. 11, 1923.

44. Cranworth, Colony in the Making, 54. For similar examples of cattle maiming, seeevidence of W. E. Barker, Native Labour Commission; Huxley, Flame Trees of Thika, 254.

45. Cattle Stabbing,EAS, Oct. 26, 1912.

46. Kyambu Cattle Case, EAS, Nov. 2, 1912. A similar case was heard later thatmonth. Cattle Maiming Case, EAS, Nov. 9, 1912; Cattle Maiming Case, EAS, Nov.23, 1912.

47. Follow the Futurists, KO, June 25, 1923; The Hyrax, KO, July 17, 1923; D. F.,letter to ed.,KO, June 26, 1923.

48. Court Cases,EAS, April 10, 1915.

49. Karl Shoemaker, The Problem of Pain in Punishment: Historical Perspectives, inSarat, Pain, Death, and the Law, 18.

50. Elizabeth B. Clark, The Sacred Rights of the Weak: Pain, Sympathy, and theCulture of Individual Rights in Antebellum America, Journal of American History 82(1995): 46393. See also Halttunen, Humanitarianism and the Pornography of Pain.

51. It was similarly no accident that the US Humane Society's edition ofBlack Beautywas subtitled The Uncle Tom's Cabin of the Horse.

52. For an extended look at violence by settlers against Africans, see Brett L. Shadle,Settlers, Africans, and Inter-personal Violence in Kenya, 19001920, (International

Journal of African Historical Studies, forthcoming).

53. A Wanderer,letter to ed.,EAS, June 25, 1910.

54.

Kennel Notes,

EAS, July 14, 1923.55. Magistrate's Court: A Brutal Native, EAS, Jan. 8, 1914. In 1921, the EASPCA

brought a case to court of an oxen being worked with a sore foot. The Indian owner wasfined 100 shillings, the African driver received seven lashes. E.A.S.P.C.A., EAS,Feb. 1, 1922.

56. C. T. Todd, Kenya's Red Sunset, 71, RH: MSS Afr s. 917. See also Fragments,The Critic, Feb. 10, 1923.


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57. Hamilton, Turn the Hour, 149. See also Life was Seldom Dull: The Experiences of aWoman in Equatorial Africa, E. F. Kennedy Memoirs, RH: Mss Afr. S. 514; MaevisBirdsey, Sigh Softly African Winds,RH: MSS Afr. s. 1794. My thanks to Will Jackson

for these references.

58. She eventually decided to humiliate the worker instead, by circling a noose aroundhis neck, placing a bandage over his eyes, and tying him to a tree stump where he could

be seen by all. Carnegie,Kenyan Farm Diary, 345.

59. High Court at Nakuru, Criminal Case 58 of 1920, evidence of Herbert MichaelHarries, KNA: AC 2/60.

60. High Court at Nakuru, Criminal Case 58 of 1920, evidence of Kiarie wa Njoro,KNA: AC 2/60.

61. Evidence of Christopher James Wilson, Medical Officer Nakuru, at Magistrate'sEnquiry and in High Court at Nakuru, Criminal Case 58 of 1920, both in KNA: AC 2/60.

62. High Court at Nakuru, Criminal Case 58 of 1920, KNA: AC 2/60.

63. High Court at Nakuru, Criminal Case 58 of 1920, Judgment, KNA: AC 2/60.

64. Simple Hurt, EAS, Sep. 25, 1920; Assault Charge, EAS, Sep. 25, 1920;H. M. Harries, letter to ed., EAS, Oct. 2, 1920. In February, Harries's case in the Courtof Appeal of East Africa was rejected, the judges determining that the sentence was notexcessive. Harries Appeal,EAS, Feb. 18, 1921.

65. D. H. Maberly, et al., to Registrar of the Court of Appeal, Oct. 1, 1920, KNA:

AC 2/60.66. Magistrate's Enquiry, evidence of Kamau wa Mushiri, KNA: AC 2/60.

67. M. G. C., letter to ed., EAS, Feb. 22, 1921.

68. Secretary of EASPCA to Commissioner of Police, Sep. 13, 1951, KNA: AM 1/57.

69. E. C. Palmes, The Scene Changes, RH: MSS Afr. x. 946. See also Ngugi'scomment on this inA Grain of Wheat(London, 1967): 162.

70. This was first recommended in 1946. K.M Cowley, Ag. Native Courts Officer, to allprovincial commissioners, May 19, 1950, KNA: CA 14/22.

71. D. Genower, Secretary of EASPCA, to Director of Agriculture, Oct. 19, 1937, KNA:BV 5/5.

72. The E.A.S.P.C.A. appeals for more support, EAS, May 4, 1951, clipping in KNA:AM 1/57; Mrs. A. Mundy, President EASPCA, to District Commissioners and Officersi/c Police posts, KNA: AM 1/57.

73. R. O. Wahl, Secretary, EASPCA, letter to members, Feb. 26, 1960, KNA: GH 7/21.

74. Quoted in Greater care of Animals by Africans Urged, EAS, April 20, 1956, clip-ping in KNA: KL 4/6. The title of the article was misleading, in that half the textinvolved poor treatment of pets by Europeans.

75. Mrs. A. Mundy, President, EASPCA, to District Commissioners and Officers i/cPolice posts, KNA: AM 1/57.

76. Chama cha Kuzuia Ukatili kwa Wanyama [Society for the Prevention of Cruelty toAnimals], Utunzaji wa Wanyama (Nairobi, 1952). I could find no further archivalinformation on the African Section of the EASPCA.


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77. Utunzaji wa Wanyama, 6. In another publication, the anonymous author asks thereaders, Aren't you happy that you aren't animals? I'm very happy! (Ninyi hamfurahikwamba si wanyama? Mimi ninafurahi sana!). Fikirini! [(you pl.) Think!],KNA: CC 18/4.

78. Utunzaji wa Wanyama,11.

79. Utunzaji wa Wanyama,8. See also Sala wa Wanyama,KNA: CC 18/4.

80. Report of the Select Committee of the Legislative Council appointed for thepurpose of inquiring into the incidence of cruelty to animals in Kenya, and advising whatsteps, if any, should be taken for implementing existing legislation, and what, if any,further legislation is desirable (Nairobi: Government Printer, 1947): 1, and MinorityReport, 910. A copy of the report can be found in KNA: GH 7/21. See also ElizabethWatkins, Olga in Kenya: Repressing the Irrepressible (London, 2005): 2534.

81. On the subsequent history of the report's legislative recommendations, see Minister ofLegal Affairs, East African Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, note toGovernor, 6 May, 1960, KNA: GH 7/21.

82. Report of the Select Committee, 7.

83. See the exchange of letters between R. W. Norton, Secretary, EASPCA, and T. C.Colchester, Secretary for Forest Development and Fisheries, March, 1956, in KNA:KL 4/6.

84. Hartley had already come to official notice two years before, during rail transport ofwild species to the coast. At a stop at Thompson Falls a plain-clothed African constablelifted a screen on a car to peer, briefly, at a lion. Hartley's son ordered an African in his

employ to beat the constable, who fought back. Carr Hartley arrived to break up thefight, which involved him punching the constable. Hartley later claimed justification,such that people crowding about the railway cars had disturbed the animals. No chargeswere brought against Carr Hartley, but state officials defended their constable against thewhite man. F. Matthews, Asst. Superintendent of Police, Nakuru, to Commissioner ofPolice, May 26, 1955, KNA: AM 1/57; Extract from a letter from Mr. Murray Smith ofFeb. 10, 1958, and R. G. Turnbull, to G. Dolton, Marsabit National Reserve, Feb. 20,1958, both in KNA: GH 7/21.

85. Carr Hartley's defense on this point was that the puppies were unwanted offspring ofAfricans' dogs, and that the puppies were always killed (how, he did not say) before being

given to the leopard. Chief Game Warden to Permanent Secretary, Ministry of ForestDevelopment, Game, and Fisheries, March 6, 1958, KNA: KL 4/6.

86. Veterinary Research Officer, Kabete, and Veterinary Officer, Nairobi, Report, July1958, KNA: KL 4/6.

87. D. D. Charters, Crown Counsel, to Permanent Secretary, Ministry of ForestDevelopment, Game, and Fisheries, Sep. 3, 1958, KNA KL 4/6.

88. D. D. Charters, Crown Counsel, to Permanent Secretary, Ministry of ForestDevelopment, Game, and Fisheries, Jan. 2, 1959, KNA: KL 4/6. Another official in theministry had advised dealing very drastically with Carr Hartley. A. H. to Chief Game

Warden, March 3, 1958, KNA: KL 4/6.89. Lonsdale notes that the first act to horrify [settlers] was the hamstringing of ranchers'cattle. Kenya,104.

90. N.a.,The Mau Mau in Kenya(London, 1954).

91.Mau Mau in Kenya, 18-9.

92.Mau Mau in Kenya, 20.


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Cruelty and Empathy, Animals and Race in Colonial Kenya.

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