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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

BRITISH EAST AFRICA DISABLED OFFICERS COLONY


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Just tripped up a reference to this scheme ( in Roy Moxham: "Tea:Addiction,Exploitation,Empire" London,2003)) of which I had never previously heard. There seems to be a file about it at The National Archives:

  

Empire Settlement Act 1922: British East Africa disabled officers' colony

Law Officers' Department: Law Officers' Opinions. Empire Settlement Act 1922: British East Africadisabled officers' colony.

Held by: The National Archives - Law Officers' Department
Date: October 1922
Reference: LO 3/610
Subjects:

Africa

 

    I am slightly aware of the "soldier settlement" schemes after both the Great War and the Boer War but this is a new one on me. Apparently recruited  55 formmer officers to grow flax on 25,000 acres of government-granted land around Kericho, Kenya.  Just as the world flax price collapsed. The scheme was run on military lines, mismanaged and a failure. The land was sold off to James Finlay and Brooke Bond for tea growing.

Rather surprised that there appears to have been no previous mention of this scheme on GWF. Would anybody on GWF have any further information about this scheme or who were the ex-officers involved?-It's worth a thread to try and gather a bit of information. Seems to be a pre-echo of the Groundnut Scheme in East Africa after the Second World War (In which my dear old next door neighbor drove a tractor for 5 years)

And one article about it,available to download on Google-whic,tantalisingly, does not name the officers involved, bar a couple.

 

Beadoc- the British East Africa Disabled Officers' Colony and the White ...

www.bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/40n2a4.pdf
 
by CJD DUDER
 
I note the previous thread  "The 1919 Soldier Settlement Scheme in Kenya'  but this seems to have petered out
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