A Failed Eldorado: Colonial Capitalism, Rural Industrialization, African Land Rights in Kenya, and The Kakamega Gold Rush, 1930-1952

This work explores Britain's attempt to take land from the Bantu-Luyia peoples of Western Kenya for gold mining following the discovery of gold in the North Kavirondo (NK) reserve in 1931. The discovery led to the Kenyan gold rush, in which local European settler farmers and mining prospectors converged on Kakamega. The presence of mining prospectors in Western Kenya and the move to transform a rural agrarian terrain into an industrial one had important economic, political, socio-cultural, medical, and environmental ramifications for the inhabitants. This book illuminates the struggles of mine workers and dispossessed African households by looking at their actions and reactions toward the emerging British colonial venture of the region. Fundamentally, this work captures the largely undocumented histories of 'the common people' who lived through Kenya's failed eldorado.