#HistoryKeThread: Mwangeka’s Blood

This first pic is of a view taken from high up in the Taita Hills.

In the late 19th century, Mekatilili’s Giriama were not the only community from present-day Coast province that rose against imposition of white rule by gun-toting Europeans. The Taita of Mwanda, too, did.

At that time, the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC) was the vessel through which Britain asserted its dominion over what would later become Kenya.

Incorporated in 1888 and chartered later the same year by the Queen of England, IBEAC was specially created to promote trade activities in territories under the control of the British.

So in the 1890s, IBEAC stepped up plans to open up the interior of East Africa by setting up administrative structures and laying down infrastructure, such as ox-cart roads (that later formed part of Nairobi-Mombasa highway that we know of today).