This project examines the development of forced labor in colonial Kenya from 1912 to 1930 and the parallel normalization of communal forced labor during this time period. The colonial reinvention of traditional unpaid labor was, as the noted historian of Kenya, Robert Maxon, has stated, 'based upon a completely fallacious view of the traditional history of Kenya's people.' Even among certain ethnic groups with a nebulous tradition of communal or collective labor, the labor requirements under communal labor were frequently distorted to the point were coerced labor no longer resembled its...

This project examines the development of forced labor in colonial Kenya from 1912 to 1930 and the parallel normalization of communal forced labor during this time period. The colonial reinvention of traditional unpaid labor was, as the noted historian of Kenya, Robert Maxon, has stated, 'based upon a completely fallacious view of the traditional history of Kenya's people.' Even among certain ethnic groups with a nebulous tradition of communal or collective labor, the labor requirements under communal labor were frequently distorted to the point were coerced labor no longer resembled its...