Debating difference: British humanitarians and forced labour in Kenya, 1919--1929

British humanitarian concern for African welfare has been well documented in the historiography of colonial Kenya. Attention has focused primarily on the extent of humanitarian success in achieving reform however, and has not looked in-depth at humanitarian motivations or their relationships with the people for whom they expressed such concern. By examining humanitarian debates about forced labour policies in Kenya during the 1920s it is apparent that while humanitarians and colonial policy makers conceived of African difference in divergent ways they held similar ideas about the necessity of British guidance. Both sides therefore served to entrench the essential paternalism that underlay colonial rule. The consequences of this thinking led humanitarians to attempt to shape and control African social and political development.