Maasai Agreement Of 1904 And 1911

For its part, the British Government argued that all claims related to the Maasai Accords of 1904 and 1911, due to state succession, were on the side of the Kenyan Government and not the United Kingdom Government. White farmers who occupy part of the disputed country, including in Laikipia, claimed that their rights to the land they hold did not come from the Maasai Accords or other activities of the British colonial government, but from titles granted by the independent Kenyan government. They sought protection of their title and property rights in accordance with the provisions of the Kenyan Constitution on the sanctity of private property. 2. to seek damages from the British Government for the loss of life, injury and loss of livestock and property resulting from the mass extermination of the Maasai of their ancestral territories following the agreements of 1904 and 1911; and the Maasai Accords of 1904 and 1911 are important because they mark the thresholds of the history of the Maasai community and its engagement with external forces that culminated in the expropriation of their country. The agreements mark important milestones in the expropriation and cession of the Community from their traditional country, but they are by no means the only basis for the Community`s claims. Instead, the claims run through Kenya`s entire history, from the beginning of colonial colonization to the present day. According to Morgan (1960), the British convinced Lenana (Olonana2), a Maasai doctor, to sign an agreement to relocate the Maasai from their country to the northern Rift Valley in order to make room for what was called the white highlands. Strictly speaking, this was not an agreement, but a means of driving out the Maasai by force (Hughes, 2006).

The demand for more land for the settlers arriving in the new British protectorate caused the British to cancel the first agreement that had not guaranteed further measures to the Maasai and, once again, on his deathbed, Lenana signed another agreement in 1911. The Maasai first challenged the measures by filing a case in 1913 – which they lost due to a formality – and then in 1932 in a memorandum presented to the Kenyan land commission at the time (Kanchorry, 2006). Later, at the Independence Conference held in London in 1962, the Maasai presented the British government with a petition demanding that the British colonists leave independence behind.