Who Gave The Right To Rule

How Colonisation Begins: The First Act of Taking

Imagine the year is 1895.

While you sleep in your homestead, thousands of miles away in London, a document is signed that declares your land, your entire world, the East Africa Protectorate under British authority. Before this moment, in 1884-85, European powers gathered at the Berlin Conference. 

For context, at the Berlin Conference, no African leaders were present or consulted. European powers simply drew lines on maps, deciding which parts of Africa each country would claim. Entire regions were divided with pens and rulers.

The Berlin Conference became a key moment in colonial and international law. It introduced the idea of “effective occupation” and set legal rules that European empires would use to justify their control over African lands. Historians still debate whether the conference created a new system for dividing Africa or just formalized the old ways of expanding empires. Either way, its rules strongly influenced later discussions about sovereignty, legitimacy, and the so-called “civilizing mission” of colonialism.

The official agreements, recorded in the General Act of the Berlin Conference (February 26, 1885), clearly explained how African territories could be claimed. These rules confirmed that decisions about borders and control were made without the input of the people who actually lived on the land. These faraway agreements laid the groundwork for what would soon happen in your homeland.

You are not consulted. No voice from your family or elders is considered. No delegation is sent to ask permission. And yet, by the stroke of a foreign pen, you and everything you know are redefined on paper as belonging to an empire. This land has belonged to your clan for generations. The hills carry your history. The soil holds your ancestors. But beneath these ordinary sounds, something unseen has already changed. Without warning. Without your knowledge. Without anyone there to object. Far away, by royal decree, your future has been decided.

Not with your consent or agreement, but with someone else’s declaration.

In 1895, the British government officially declared what is now Kenya a protectorate. The word sounds gentle. Protective. Temporary.

But when you look closer, the word hides more than it reveals. A protectorate is a territory placed under the control of a stronger power, usually described as being "for its own good." As historian Andrew Roberts observes, a protectorate often maintains some appearance of local governance, but ultimate sovereignty shifts to the outside power (see Roberts, "The Colonial Moment in Africa," 1982). The term itself comes from a Latin word meaning "one who protects." Political theorist Charles Alexandrowicz defined a protectorate as "a subordinate state... shielded and directed by a dominant one, with international representation and major decisions controlled externally" (Alexandrowicz, "The Legal Position of Protectorates," 1952). By contrast, as historian Ronald Robinson defined it, a colony is typically governed more directly: the colonial power assumes formal, open control, replaces local leadership, and administers the area as an extension of its own territory (Robinson and Gallagher, "Africa and the Victorians," 1961). 

Put simply, in a protectorate, local rulers keep some authority under outside supervision; in a colony, the foreign power takes over entirely. In both cases, the people affected have little real say, but understanding this difference shows how the language of 'protection' could be used to mask the reality of foreign dominance.

Some historians and colonial officials have argued that protectorates were less harsh than full colonies. They say protectorates helped protect weaker states from outside enemies or internal conflict, while still allowing local leaders to keep some power. In this view, protectorates were practical arrangements meant to bring stability and development without fully taking over the country.

Others argue that in some cases, local rulers may have agreed to these treaties because they believed they would benefit from them. However, these agreements were often made under pressure, with limited information, and the stronger power usually decided most of the terms.

Even so, the claimed benefits of protectorates, such as more freedom for local leaders, gradual reform, or access to new systems and institutions, must be compared with the reality. In most cases, the most important decisions were still controlled from outside, and the wishes of the people were often ignored.

Recognizing these counter-arguments helps us understand both the complexity of colonial structures and the reasons why claims to legitimacy were, and remain, widely contested.

However, in practice, this so-called protection often meant loss of real independence. The people did not ask to be protected. They were not consulted.

Calling Kenya a protectorate made foreign rule appear lawful and even kind. But in reality, it allowed Britain to control the territory while presenting that control as helpful and necessary.

Local chiefs were no longer free to lead as they had for generations. They answered not to their people, but to colonial administrators. Taxes were set by foreign officials. Movement was controlled. Laws were enforced that most Kenyans had no part in creating. Land could be taken. Customary law could be ignored. Decisions about daily life were made thousands of miles away, in London.

This was called “protection.”

But protection without consent is control. A protectorate meant one simple truth: ultimate authority rested with the British Crown. The reasoning was blunt: we have the power to rule, therefore we have the right. But power is not permission. Power is the ability to impose. Permission is the agreement of those being governed.

From the very beginning, colonization rested on a risky assumption: that force could replace consent. That control alone could create legitimacy.

But this idea directly contradicts the political theories Britain itself celebrated. Thinkers such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that a government is legitimate only if it rests on the consent of the governed, not simply on the ability to exercise power.

Locke wrote that rulers gain authority only through the “consent of the people.” Rousseau spoke of a “social contract,” an agreement between citizens and the state that gives government its moral foundation.

Yet in colonial Kenya, this principle was repeatedly set aside. Power was imposed. Decisions were enforced, and authority was exercised without agreement. Again and again, control stood in for consent. This is the thread running through the story: the belief that authority backed by force was enough, even when the people themselves had never agreed to be ruled.

Democracy: Origin and Meaning

To understand the contradiction, we must first understand democracy itself.

The formal idea of democracy is often traced to Ancient Athens in the 6th century BCE. But historians remind us that democratic-like assemblies existed elsewhere in Mesopotamia, parts of the Indian subcontinent, among Indigenous peoples in the Americas, and across pre-colonial Africa.

In Africa, many societies practiced forms of deliberative and participatory governance. For example, the Oromo of Ethiopia developed the Gadaa system, a structured, rotating leadership model rooted in accountability and community participation. Under Gadaa, decision-making was not simply about voting; it was a careful, communal process.

Similarly, councils of elders across the continent often operated through consensus rather than top-down authority. Among the Kikuyu, elders would remind the community: “It is the people who build the fence, not the chief,” signaling that authority depended on collective agreement. Leaders were always accountable to the people and could be removed if they failed to uphold communal decisions.

This stands in sharp contrast to the British colonial model, where authority was often delegated from above, and local populations had little recourse if rulers acted without their consent.

Comparing these systems highlights a core philosophical difference: African participatory systems like Gadaa built legitimacy from the ground up, rooted in community involvement and ongoing accountability. In contrast, the British model emphasized hierarchical authority, with power and legitimacy flowing from central institutions down to the governed. In African systems, legitimacy was earned and continually reaffirmed; under British colonial rule, it was imposed.

England is often called the “mother” of modern democracy because of the gradual development of its parliamentary system, a slow evolution that emphasized representation, debate, and limits on absolute monarchy. Over time, Parliament gained authority, and the idea that rulers should be accountable to the people became central to British political identity.

Yet this reputation tells only part of the story. Even as parliamentary power expanded, political rights within Britain were limited to a narrow section of society. For centuries, voting and representation were restricted by property ownership, gender, religion, and wealth. 

Women, in particular, were excluded from political participation until well into the 20th century; British women only won limited voting rights in 1918, with full equal suffrage arriving in 1928. Many working-class men gained the vote only after the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884, and Catholics and Jews faced restrictions into the mid-19th century. Their absence from the ballot was not accidental; it reflected a deliberate definition of who counted as a political subject. The poor and many religious minorities were also denied meaningful participation.

The story of British parliamentary democracy, therefore, is not only one of gradual inclusion but also one of long-standing exclusion. If women in Britain were denied the vote at home while Kenyans were denied political participation abroad, Britain’s claim to democratic legitimacy faced contradictions on multiple fronts. A nation that championed consent and representation struggled to explain why millions within its own society and across its empire were excluded from both.

These tensions within Britain’s political system echoed in its colonies, where participation was even more restricted and systems of exclusion more firmly entrenched. The selective application of consent at home foreshadowed its selective application abroad.

At the same time, British political philosophy promoted enduring principles: parliamentary sovereignty, ordered liberty, gradual reform rather than violent upheaval, and government accountability to the people. These ideas have left a lasting mark on modern democratic thought and practice.

Yet the way they were applied historically exposes a persistent tension between democratic ideals and political reality. The gap between principle and practice was evident during colonial rule, but it did not end with independence.

Today, debates about inclusivity, the devolution of power, and the meaning of national sovereignty remain central in Kenya and across many postcolonial societies. Contested elections, disputes over local governance, and struggles over land rights all reflect the ongoing challenge of translating democratic principles into lived reality. For example, the 2022 presidential election saw public protests and legal petitions over the results, as competing parties questioned the transparency and fairness of the electoral process. Similarly, the ongoing conflicts in Laikipia and Lamu over land ownership and historic evictions highlight how unresolved colonial-era questions about land rights continue to fuel tension and shape political debate. These recent events demonstrate that the struggle for consent and legitimacy is not confined to the past, but is continually renewed in Kenya’s present.

The tension between formal structures and everyday experience persists, a reminder that the journey toward genuine government by consent, where citizens have both voice and authority, is far from complete.

Democracy means people vote. In colonial Kenya, Africans did not vote. Democracy means the people choose their leaders. In colonial Kenya, leaders were chosen by settlers and approved in London. Democracy means fair and equal treatment. In colonial Kenya, land was taken. Taxes were imposed. Labor was controlled. And the people most affected had no voice. In 1907, a Legislative Council was formed. It looked democratic. It sounded democratic. But it was not democratic. Europeans could vote. Africans could not. Millions were governed. Almost none consented. The ballot box existed, but it was locked. So what does democracy mean if most people are excluded?

If laws are written about you, without you, is that representation? If power is exercised over you, without your agreement, is that legitimacy? The language of democracy remained. But the right to participate did not. And when the words stay, but the rights disappear, democracy becomes a mask.

The 2010 Constitution of Kenya defines democracy as a system in which sovereign power belongs to the people and must be exercised in accordance with equality, inclusivity, and the rule of law.

Notice the key phrase:

Sovereign power belongs to the people.

If we take seriously the political philosophy Britain claimed to uphold, that legitimate government exists only through the consent of the governed, then colonial rule in Kenya presents a deep moral contradiction.

The central question remains:

Does power alone justify authority?

Or must true legitimacy come from the consent of the people?

How could a government claim legitimacy at home by speaking of consent, while denying that same principle in the territories it controlled?

As we move forward in history, another question follows:

Could the actions that unfolded in law, in land, in administration ever resolve this contradiction? Or did they only deepen it?

In 1895, sovereign power in Kenya did not belong to the people. It was transferred to the British Crown.

You were likely taught that Kenya gained independence on December 12, 1963, and became a parliamentary democracy with a multi-party system.

But consider this carefully:

If modern democratic ideas were developed and refined in England, and if Britain assumed direct control over Kenya in 1895, why did it take 68 painful years for independence to arrive?

During those decades, nearly a million Kenyans were forcibly moved from their ancestral lands. Tens of thousands were detained without trial. Tax burdens doubled and tripled. Entire villages were evicted to make room for settler plantations.

Each number marks more than the time passing. It marks disruption, lives unsettled, families separated, and communities placed under constant strain.

And yet, throughout those years, Kenyan communities were not passive. From the earliest days of colonial rule, people resisted and negotiated in many ways. They refused unjust taxes. They organized petitions. They staged strikes. They sent delegations to challenge colonial administrators. They attempted to reclaim land and defend local authority. For example, in 1921, the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) was formed to campaign for land rights and greater political representation. Leaders like Harry Thuku galvanized support through protests and petitions. In March 1922, Thuku led a workers' strike and mass demonstration in Nairobi, drawing thousands to challenge colonial pass laws and worsening conditions. His arrest sparked further protests, demonstrating how organized, collective action became a hallmark of early Kenyan resistance. Nor was the opposition limited to the Kikuyu region: the Nandi, under leaders like Koitalel Arap Samoei, fiercely resisted British intrusion in the Rift Valley, and the Giriama in the coastal region, led by Mekatilili wa Menza, organized revolts against colonial rule. These diverse acts of defiance across multiple communities show that resistance was wide-reaching and took many forms.

The struggle for autonomy did not begin in 1963. It began the moment consent was removed.

So the question remains:

If democracy is government by consent, why was consent delayed for nearly seven decades? If Britain believed in parliamentary representation, why were Africans excluded from genuine political power for so long?

Was democracy meant to be universal or selective?

The Quiet Conversion of Land

The next step after political declaration was not war.

It was law.

In 1902, the Crown Lands Ordinance reclassified large areas of land as “Crown land.” In 1915, a broader ordinance declared that all land not officially registered as privately owned would legally belong to the Crown.

The wording was dry. Technical. Almost clinical. In a few bureaucratic lines, ancestral homelands became state property.

The formal tone of the law concealed the scale of what it did. For communities like the Maasai of Laikipia, the 1915 ordinance meant forced eviction from grazing lands they had used for generations. Chiefs were summoned and informed that they no longer had rights to their own pastures. Soon after, settler farms and ranches spread across those same lands.

What the law described as “reclassification,” families experienced as a sudden loss, homes dismantled, burial sites left behind, and elders watching boundary markers driven into familiar soil. In months, centuries of belonging were undone.

Pause there.

Land that had long been managed through customary systems through lineage rights, seasonal grazing patterns, and communal stewardship was labeled “vacant” because it did not fit British legal definitions of ownership.

If your claim to land was ancestral rather than written on paper, colonial law rendered it invisible. Invisible ownership became no ownership. No ownership became Crown ownership.

The British system required signatures, title deeds, survey maps, and official records. But many African communities relied on oral testimony, memory, and shared recognition of boundaries. Elders could recount histories of land use stretching back generations. Yet colonial courts dismissed oral knowledge as insufficient. This was because British legal tradition equated legitimacy and security of ownership with documentation that could be physically verified, standardized, and archived. They regarded written evidence as more reliable and less open to dispute than memory or spoken accounts, even though these had always worked in local contexts. Without written documentation in the required format, stewardship that had been recognized for centuries became legally meaningless.

To picture this in today's world, imagine losing your family home because you cannot produce a specific document, even though your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents all lived there, cared for it, and were known by the neighbors as its rightful owners. The law would overlook a lifetime of memories, shared rituals, and every story told in the home simply because a piece of paper was missing. Suddenly, everything familiar can be taken not because it is unused or forgotten, but because it is undocumented in the required way.

Among the Kikuyu, a proverb says:

“The land is not given by our fathers; it is borrowed from our children.”

This reflected a deep sense of responsibility across generations, a living relationship to land rooted in memory and obligation. But colonial law translated that living history into an empty space on a map.

This is how dispossession becomes legal, not through open theft, but through redefinition.

The Philosophical Confrontation

Let us make this simple.

If I enter your home, declare it administratively mismanaged, rename your rooms, charge you rent, and insist I am improving your standards of living, am I a reformer?

Or am I an occupier?

British political philosophy claims that government gains its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. It teaches that parliamentary sovereignty reflects the will of the people, and that ordered liberty protects citizens from arbitrary rule.

Now test that principle by turning it upside down.

Imagine that in 1895, a council of African leaders met in Nairobi and signed a document declaring sovereignty over Norfolk in England. Imagine they announced that Norfolk’s fields, farms, and ancient market towns now belonged to a distant African authority.

Picture families in places like King’s Lynn or Norwich waking up to official notices posted on church doors and town halls. They are told that their land is now part of a foreign protectorate, that new officials will arrive to manage their taxes, their laws, and their local government.

Imagine these foreign administrators redrawing the borders of the Fens or the Broads. Passing new laws. Controlling land ownership. Making decisions without asking the people who live there all while insisting it is “for their own good.”

How convincing would this claim of legitimacy sound to the people of Norfolk? Would they accept it calmly as lawful? As benevolent? As justified?

If such a takeover would seem absurd and unacceptable to Britons, then the moral contradiction of colonial authority becomes difficult to deny. Either consent was never as universal as Britain claimed, or the empire required setting aside the very values it celebrated. A principle that applies only within national borders is not universal. It is a privilege.

Empire rarely says, “We are here to take.”

They say:

We are here to develop.

We are here to modernize.

We are here to bring order.

We are here to uplift.

Railways were built. Administrative posts were established. Missionaries opened schools. From the perspective of colonial officials, these acts were not just improvements but civilizing achievements. Sir Charles Eliot, an early Commissioner in East Africa, strongly promoted white settlement in the highlands as the path to progress, arguing it would bring regulated order, economic vitality, and elevation of the area under British guidance, without the complications of an "advanced" existing civilization to disrupt. He saw this as imposing structure on what he portrayed as sparse, undeveloped territory.

In their own words, the British saw their mission as a gift. But development without consent is still an imposition. A gift you never asked for, one that costs you your autonomy, is not generosity. It is restructuring. The “civilizing” mission reframed hierarchy as a form of help. And over time, this story did something powerful: It made absolute domination and takeover appear responsible. This contrast in language reveals how what was offered as progress could instead be experienced as dispossession.

Structural Violence Before Open Conflict

Many imagine violence as the moment a weapon is raised.

But violence begins earlier.

It begins when:

• You must pay tax in a currency you do not use.
• You must work on settler farms to earn that currency.
• Your grazing routes are restricted.
• Your land becomes a “White Highlands” zone reserved for Europeans.
• Your traditional leaders answer to colonial officers.

This is slow violence. It does not explode. It constricts. By the time someone resists physically, pressure has already been building for decades.

Picture the tightening grip: in 1901, the annual hut tax was two rupees, but by the 1920s it had climbed sharply, compelling more families into wage labor on settler farms. Labor ordinances expanded kilometer by kilometer, and pass laws made every movement measurable. In 1915, with new regulations, Africans could be sentenced to forced work for failing to pay taxes. By 1931, tens of thousands had been penalized.

Take the example of a family in Kiambu District. In 1901, they could manage their yearly tax using surplus from their harvest. But by 1925, the situation had changed. The hut tax had increased, and new fees had been introduced.

If both parents were present in the home, their eldest son would often have had to leave seasonally to work on distant settler plantations just to prevent the family from falling into debt or facing arrest.

Instead of investing time in their own fields, they spent months working for wages that barely covered the rising taxes.

With each tax increase, each new permit, and each sentence of forced labor, the pressure grew heavier. What may have started as a manageable burden slowly became a tightening grip year after year.

Colonization changes more than land. It changes what feels normal. Children grow up under foreign laws and begin to see them as ordinary. Markets adjust to new restrictions. Churches preach obedience. Police enforce compliance. What once felt abnormal becomes routine. And once something becomes routine, it begins to feel permanent.

That is how a takeover turns into governance. Yet even as these new rules settled into daily life, people did not simply accept them. They found quiet ways to endure and to resist.

Elders passed down oral histories that were never written in colonial records. Mothers taught ancestral songs and proverbs in soft voices behind closed doors. Markets were held at unusual hours, away from the eyes of colonial officers. Communities created subtle ways to share news about lost land, about arrested elders, about new restrictions.

In the evenings, families gathered not just for warmth, but to remember to speak the names, customs, and stories that laws could not erase.

These quiet acts of care and memory kept alive the understanding that foreign authority was never fully accepted. Even as systems of control tightened, the refusal to surrender language, kinship, and belonging showed that consent had not been given.

Beneath the surface, the hope for self-determination endured.

Before the Uprising

Before forests were filled with fighters, before emergency laws, before detention camps, there were documents. There were ordinances. There were signatures made in London.

Colonization did not begin with rebellion. Rebellion began when imposed authority became harsh and unyielding. When land loss passed from one generation to the next. When people were denied a political voice.

When unfair systems became part of everyday life, resistance was not sudden. It was a response. Uprisings begin the moment power is declared without consent.

This history is not just in the past; it remains with us. Around the world, questions still arise about whose voices matter and what makes a government legitimate. The contradiction at the center of colonial rule still demands attention. In Kenya today, debates over devolution, land rights, and inclusivity can be traced directly to systems created during the colonial era. Disputes over historical land injustices, for example, are the legacy of laws and boundaries first imposed by colonial administrators. Counties established by the 2010 constitution aim to return power closer to local communities precisely because the colonial government centralized authority in Nairobi. Dialogue about increasing representation for marginalized groups such as women, pastoralists, and minorities echoes the exclusions written into colonial law. Recent calls for greater public participation in budget-making and law reform reflect an ongoing effort to rebuild trust where it was broken by a history of rule without consent. By learning from this history, today’s policymakers can work to ensure more participatory forms of governance, inviting broader public input, designing laws that actively include marginalized voices, and building systems where legitimacy is continually renewed through open consent and dialogue. Such lessons can help make governments both more accountable and more resilient.

Who decides? Who is heard? Who writes the rules of belonging?

The struggle over consent and legitimacy is not only a story about history. It is a challenge that continues to shape our world today.

Works Cited

Alexandrowicz, Charles H. The Legal Position of Protectorates in International Law. Oxford University Press, 1952.

Anderson, David. Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. W. W. Norton, 2005.

Berman, Bruce. Control and Crisis in Colonial Kenya: The Dialectic of Domination. Ohio University Press, 1990.

Elkins, Caroline. Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya. Henry Holt, 2005.

Eliot, Charles. The East Africa Protectorate. Edward Arnold, 1905. Internet Archive,https://dn710107.ca.archive.org/0/items/eastafricaprotec00eliouoft/eastafricaprotec00eliouoft.pdf.

“General Act of the Berlin Conference.” 26 Feb. 1885.

Roberts, Andrew. The Colonial Moment in Africa: Essays on the Movement of Minds and Materials, 1900–1940. Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Robinson, Ronald, and John Gallagher. Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism. Macmillan, 1961.

The National Archives (UK). Colonial Office Records: Kenya: Acts, 1902–1963. CO 533/1–CO 533/610, Kew, London.