Race and empire

<p>Race and empire tells the story of a short-lived but vehement eugenics movement that emerged among a group of Europeans in Kenya in the 1930s unleashing a set of writings on racial differences in intelligence more extreme than that emanating from any other British colony in the twentieth century. <br><br>The Kenyan eugenics movement of the 1930s adapted British ideas to the colonial environment: in all its extremity Kenyan eugenics was not simply a bizarre and embarrassing colonial mutation as it was later dismissed but a logical extension of British eugenics in a colonial context. By tracing the history of eugenic thought in Kenya the book shows how the movement took on a distinctive colonial character driven by settler political preoccupations and reacting to increasingly outspoken African demands for better and more independent education. <br><br>Through a close examination of attitudes towards race and intelligence in a British colony Race and empire reveals how eugenics was central to colonial racial theories before World War Two.</p>