East Africa Protectorate (also known as British East Africa)
was an area in the African Great Lakes occupying roughly the same terrain as
present-day Kenya (approximately 639,209 km2 (246,800 sq mi))from the Indian
Ocean inland to Uganda and the Great Rift Valley. Although part of the
dominions of the Sultan of Zanzibar, it was controlled by Britain in the late
19th century; it grew out of British commercial interests in the area in the
1880s and remained a protectorate until 1920 when it became the colony of
Kenya, save for a 16-kilometre-wide (10 mi) coastal strip that became the Kenya
protectorate.
European missionaries began settling in the area from
Mombasa to Mount Kilimanjaro in the 1840s, nominally under the protection of
the Sultan of Zanzibar. In 1886, the British government encouraged William
Mackinnon, who already had an agreement with the Sultan and whose shipping company
traded extensively in the African Great Lakes, to establish British influence
in the region. He formed a British East Africa Association which led to the
Imperial British East Africa Company being chartered in 1888 and given the
original grant to administer the dependency. It administered about 240
kilometres (150 mi) of coastline stretching from the River Jubba via Mombasa to
German East Africa which were leased from the Sultan. The British "sphere
of influence", agreed at the Berlin Conference of 1885, extended up the
coast and inland across the future Kenya and after 1890 included Uganda as
well. Mombasa was the administrative centre at this time.
Compiled by Steven Abdalla
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