Settler colonialism in Kenya was both exemplary and aberrant. Here we encounter several of the defining characteristics of the settler colony as classically defined but encounter no less significant anomalies: a uniquely self-regarding settler culture; an intensely conflicted set of relations linking settlers to the state; a powerful and seemingly pervasive strain of fantasy in settler discourse that worked to conjure not just Kenya but a mythic ‘Africa’ by extension.1 While historical research has now largely dispelled the image of Kenya’s settlers as picturesque fragments of an English aristocracy resplendent against the exotic backdrop of ‘wild Africa’, the imagery produced by a certain coterie of white colonials in Kenya has endured. Today, as in the colonial period itself, the controversies generated by settler violence stand well apart from the circulation of an idea of Kenya that strives to appear entirely benign.