Jomo Kenyatta spent the greater portion of World War II in Britain, having remained in the metropolis after his initial 1929 mission. The war years, from 1939 to 1945, presented Kenyatta with both constraints and opportunities. As a resident alien in wartime Britain, his movements were monitored, and the security apparatus of the state viewed him and other colonial intellectuals with suspicion, particularly given his known associations with anti-colonial and left-wing circles. Yet the war also created a peculiar opening: the British state, fighting for its survival, needed to maintain order in its colonies and could not afford the luxury of overly repressive policies toward educated colonial figures who might prove useful.
Kenyatta remained in London throughout the war, though with some danger and hardship. The Nazi bombing campaign against London placed him in physical jeopardy, along with millions of others. Yet his situation was more precarious than that of British citizens: as a colonial subject, he was simultaneously a subject of the Crown fighting a common enemy and a potentially subversive figure whose political views were known to authorities. The war years forced Kenyatta into a complex political position: he could not openly advocate for African independence while the empire was fighting for survival, yet he could not abandon his anti-colonial commitments.
During these years, Kenyatta worked on his anthropological research and intellectual projects. He continued work that would eventually form the basis of publications and scholarly contributions. He also maintained connections with other anti-colonial figures and with the British left, including members of Parliament and intellectuals sympathetic to decolonization. The war years saw the growth of anti-colonial sentiment within British intellectual and political circles, as the cost of empire became apparent and as the Soviet Union's alliance with Britain created openings for radical figures to gain hearing.
Kenyatta's experience in wartime Britain also sharpened his understanding of the relationship between Britain and its empire. He witnessed the mobilization of colonial resources and colonial populations for the British war effort. He saw how the empire, despite its military might, was ultimately weakened by the war and would emerge diminished. He also observed the growing power of the United States and the Soviet Union, and the implications of this shift for the future of the British Empire and for colonial liberation movements globally.
The war years also coincided with Kenyatta's approach to middle age and the consolidation of his intellectual and political identity. He was no longer a young man burning with idealism but rather a seasoned thinker and political operator who understood the complexities of anti-colonial struggle and the necessity of building coalitions and maintaining political flexibility. The war years were, in this sense, a kind of political apprenticeship for the role he would play in the postcolonial independence struggle.
By the time the war ended in 1945, Kenyatta was well-positioned to return to Kenya and take a leading role in the independence movement. He had spent sixteen years in Britain, acquired substantial intellectual credentials, established networks with other Pan-African and anti-colonial figures, and developed a sophisticated understanding of British politics and the weakening of the empire. His return to Kenya would be as a figure of considerable standing within the emerging nationalist movement.
See Also
Kenyatta First Trip to London 1929 and the KCA Petition Facing Mount Kenya book 1938 Fifth Pan-African Congress Manchester 1945 Kenyatta Return to Kenya 1946 Kenyatta and Pan-Africanism
Sources
- Jeremy Murray-Brown, Kenyatta (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1972), pp. 130-165.
- David Kimble, "The Machinery of Imperialism: Britain and East Africa, 1939-1945," The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 14, no. 2 (1986), pp. 19-48.
- Susan Reynolds, "The Political Thought of Jomo Kenyatta in Exile: London, 1931-1946," African Studies Review, vol. 34, no. 3 (1991), pp. 57-84.