ABSTRACT
Kenya's current political boundaries have existed in their present form for less than 100 years. Before 1895, Kenya was an amalgamation of individual, ethnically constituted "nations". Kenya's independence, granted in 1963, followed several draft constitutions with the Boston Tea Party-esque questions about representation, particularly given the numbers of Europeans and Indians. The "Strange white men" who were now entering the interior of Kenya included Indians. Despite the earlier "pacification" of the British East Africa Protectorate and subsequently Kenya, nascent nationalism, protest movements and socio-political organizing started a few years after the declaration of the Kenya Colony. The riots in Kisumu gave the Kenyatta government the pretext to ban Kenya Peoples' Union (KPU) and thus destroy the last vestige of opposition in Kenya, making it a de facto one-party state. The debut of the issue of ethnicity can be seen in the very first interactions of the future Kenya with the Europeans.
