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This is tangential but I do think people tend to overestimate what the Uganda Scheme was.
Like it was literally just the UK offering willing jewish immigrants plots of land in the White Highlands, like thousands of other white immigrants were offered in OTL.
And the whole idea of the White Highlands was based on an underestimation of african population based on severe famines and diseases making the land seem far emptier than it usually was and so the idea was that a single masaii reserve could be established and the rest of the land was free real estate where new towns could be established uncontested.
The British would have preferred that the Kenyan Highlands was entirely white english middle class people, one of the governors attempted to make it that way. But this wasn't Rhodesia, where there were strict immigration requirements to keep out the poor and non british, this was Kenya where common soldiers could get their own land and it was much more of a dumping ground, see also the many tens of thousands of indians and arabs who became landowners in Kenya during this time.
Like the very area mentioned as a possible site for a jewish town became an afrikaaner town five years later. I'm not really convinced a jewish presence changes the concreted Kenyan government effort to purchase this land in OTL that meant most of the white and asian settlers left the country.
Fundamentally the problem with imagining an Israel in Kenya is I don't believe the Zionists have the blood in the game in that scenario. Once the Mau Mau rebellion kicks off, would the people who fought for Jerusalem be as willing to fight for Nairobi? Or would they just leave like most white kenyans did otl?
Like it was literally just the UK offering willing jewish immigrants plots of land in the White Highlands, like thousands of other white immigrants were offered in OTL.
And the whole idea of the White Highlands was based on an underestimation of african population based on severe famines and diseases making the land seem far emptier than it usually was and so the idea was that a single masaii reserve could be established and the rest of the land was free real estate where new towns could be established uncontested.
The British would have preferred that the Kenyan Highlands was entirely white english middle class people, one of the governors attempted to make it that way. But this wasn't Rhodesia, where there were strict immigration requirements to keep out the poor and non british, this was Kenya where common soldiers could get their own land and it was much more of a dumping ground, see also the many tens of thousands of indians and arabs who became landowners in Kenya during this time.
Like the very area mentioned as a possible site for a jewish town became an afrikaaner town five years later. I'm not really convinced a jewish presence changes the concreted Kenyan government effort to purchase this land in OTL that meant most of the white and asian settlers left the country.
Fundamentally the problem with imagining an Israel in Kenya is I don't believe the Zionists have the blood in the game in that scenario. Once the Mau Mau rebellion kicks off, would the people who fought for Jerusalem be as willing to fight for Nairobi? Or would they just leave like most white kenyans did otl?