The Implausible Persistence of Pastoralism: Samburu Transhumance from Their Nineteenth-Century Origins Through the Period of Colonial Rule

Abstract

ABSTRACT Based mainly on archival and oral sources this study examines the history of the cattle-herding Samburu people from the mid-nineteenth century through Kenyan independence in 1963. The authors emphasize the resilience and resourcefulness that the transhumant pastoralists exhibited as they encountered a host of challenges that ranged from epidemics and major outbreaks of disease among their livestock to interethnic competition for scarce resources to a host of disruptions brought on by colonial rule. The allegedly scientific nostrums British administrators sought to impose engendered a host of innovative reactions and ultimately the Samburu succeeded in abolishing the most onerous of these so that they gained their own kind of independence even before Uhuru came to the rest of Kenya. Thus, the Samburu brand of transhumant pastoralism, which colonial officials and other “expert” observers once believed a curious relic that was destined for the dustbin of history, nonetheless persisted into the post-independence era.