The attention of the British government was focused exclusively on European needs; as such, all measures tended to lack the necessary foresight. During the Great War Nairobi first acted as a military depot and then, from 1916, as a staging, recruiting and training centre as the British advanced into German East Africa. Commerce was repeatedly interrupted: the railway was blown up several times and in constant in otherwise use otherwise by the army. However, this disruption and governmental encouragement stimulated local production of goods that had previously been imported. Many small manufacturers founded businesses in this period. The war fever that hit Nairobi in 1914 also had its amusing aspects. The white settlers abandoned their farms and flocked to Nairobi carrying sporting rifles, elephant guns and wearing a strange assortment of Grandpa's headgear and Grandma's underwear. Their self-created companies were called 'Bowker's Horse', 'Arnold's Scouts', 'The South African Plateau' to name but a few. But when the fever had cooled down and the excitement waned many of the settlers drifted back to their farms and the professionals took over.

In 1921 the foundation of the Young Kikuyu Association indicated a new advance of African interests. The first African political spokesman and leader, Harry Thuku, inevitably clashed with the government over questions of land ownership, raised taxes and lowered wages. Nairobi then witnessed its first serious political demonstration in March 1922 when twenty-two (probably more) civilians were shot dead outside the Norfolk Hotel following the news of Thuku's arrest. Appropriately enough the Norfolk now stands in Harry Thuku Road.

Meanwhile a far more noisy element in Kenyan Society was making itself heard loud and clear. The white settlers, purposefully led by Lord Delamere, were keenly pushing ahead with their desire for 'seller role' based on the models of Canada or New Zealand. Their numbers were in inverse proportion to their political clout but their ranks were swelling each month. In December 1919, through the 'Homes for Heroes' policy, no less than 1,500 soldier/settlers and their wives arrived in mombasa harbour on one ship. This exacerbated the already delicate situation between the Asian and European inhabitants. Delamere finally took the matter in hand in 1923. The outcome of his visit to London that year was the publication of the Devonshire Declaration. By pressing its demands for exclusive landownership and political power too hard, the European community had forced the Colonial Office in Britain into a declaration of policy. The resultant Devonshire Declaration (often referred to as 'the declaration of the paramountcy of African interests') denied all the immigrant races the monopoly of power which they desired.

The Great Depression between 1929-33 naturally took its toll on Nairobi as it did on virtually every city in the world. But by introducing a programme for basic wages for basic employment, subsidised by the government, at least a measure of distress was alleviated. Prior to the Depression, Muthaiga, Eastleigh, Upper Parklands and Westlands had been included in Nairobi, increasing its size from 18 to 83 square kilometres: perfect circles were thus abandoned. After the Depression development continued apace; hospitals, office buildings, schools and private accommodation were constructed and gradually more roads were surfaced. But in 1939 the outbreak of the Second World War put an effective spanner in the works of all development.

Nairobi's role in the Second World War was similar to that in the First World War. It was a staging, recruiting and training centre as well as a launching base for the British assault on Italian occupied Abyssinia (Ethiopia), and a staging post for the King's African Rifles, who went to fight in Burma. Significantly one soldier wrote: 'The first time I ever thought of myself as a Kenyan (as opposed to a Kikuyu) was in 1943 in the Kalewa trenches on the Burma front.

Major social changes, however, had also taken place in the interwar years; social conditions had deteriorated in many areas of Nairobi and education in the many spheres of political life generated a growing awareness of the need for national Independence. Between 1942 and 1947 Nairobi's population expanded at the phenomenal rate of 17% per annum, inflation reached 400% between 1939 and 1945 while wages only went up by 200% in that period.

The years 1945-52 witnessed some critical developments. In 1947 Mwangi Macharia formed the Nairobi Workers Federation. A year later Fred Kubal and John Mungai of the Transport and Allied Workers Union (the largest union in Kenya at the time). together with Bildad Kaggia of the Clerks Union, attempted to form the East African Trades Union Congress. The government refused it registration but this was a clew indication of how Nairobi's working class had become politically aware. It may also partly account for the government clamp-down on both urban and rural sqatters over the next few months. Permits were made obligatory, and unauthorised residents were deported. The Legislative Council imposed licences on many sectors to prevent strikes in essential services. In May 1950 Makham Singh inspired 6,000 municipal workers in Nairobi to go out on strike and the crowds witnessed the Kenym govemment's first use of tear gas. In contrast Nairobi had celebrated, in grand style, its rise to the status of a city in March 1950 when the Duke of Gloucester presented, on behalf of the King of England (George VI), a charter to the people of Nairobi. Since it takes more than violent undercurrents and a grim social background to create a nationalist movement, one must also look at the overt political actions and thoughts of those who led what was to be known as 'Mau Mau' - Kenya's Independence Movement. In Nairobi as elsewhere in Central Kenya Mau Mau was no mere battle between black and white, good and evil. Indeed more Europeans were killed in traffic accidents in Nairobi during these years than were killed in anger. Most, if not all the elements in Mau Mau (economic and social as well as political) were to find violent exppression in the city streets. Indeed it is impossible to exaggerate Nalrobi's part in the action. One important point to stress about Mau Mau was the tribal exclusivity of the movement: Kikuyu, Meru and Embu were the main oath-takers of loyalty to Mau Mau although many other tribes may have been sympathetic at various stages.

The call for African representation began with Thuku and ended with Kenyatta's election as President in 1963. However, the path to Uhuru was punctuated by violence, drama, frustration, heroism and man's baser nature. In 1944 Eliud Mathu was nominated as the first African member of the Legislative Council, and shortly after this symbolic move the Kenya African Union (KAU) was founded to supply Mathu with information relating to the social and economic demands of Africans. KAU was principally an elitist group of missionary-educated men who chose Thuku as their leader figure though he was, within a few months, ousted for being too moderate. Indeed, the whole tone of KAU was seen as altogether too moderate by the older association, the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA). Founded in 1925, the KCA had been outlawed by the government in 1940. Its members now saw this new group as threatening its position of authority and potential political power. Thus in 1946 the KCA recalled the one man capable and qualified to reinvest the older association with its previous prestige and the only common link between the two groups Jomo Kenyatta.

Self-imposed European exile and education had endowed Kenyatta with cunning and fortitude, both of which he was to need in plenty over the next years. In 1947, as the new President of KAU, he travelled about the country giving speeches and lectures to enormous crowds. Towards the close of that year Kenyatta faced one of the most difficult situations of his life. Over the government's agricultural proposals of compulsory land terracing by women (an attempt to prevent soil erosion) he fell between two stools. His credibility sank considerably with the radical wing when he attempted to calm the hysteria caused by these plans.

Then in 1950, at a meeting on Banana Hill just outside Nairobi, the split became apparent between the younger more radical and leftwing members (men of the Unions like Kaggia, Kubai, Oginga Odinga and James Beauttah) and the older, more moderate men who supported Kenyatta, like Tom Mbotela and ex-Senior Chief Koinange. With the colonial government deaf to the calls for reform, the old guard, with Kenyatta at their head, increasingly lost control. The young urban radicals consolidated their hold over KAU and, most importantly, accelerated the pace and changed the scope and nature of the 'oathing campaign'. Initially a characteristic of traditional Kikuyu life, the oaths of loyalty and unity became a means of mass political mobilisation. This radicalisation brought with it some mumbo-jumbo and brutality which has tended to obscure the higher aims of the movement. In the latter half of 1952 a wave of assassinations and violence in Nairobi precipitated a declaration of a State of Emergency on 20th October by the newly arrived Governor - Sir Evelyn Baring.

At Independence Kenya was a multi-party political state; from 1969 it became a defacto one-party state and from mid-l982 a de jure one-party system. The party KANU (Kenya African National Union) was founded in 1960 and is based on democratic elections held at least every five years at the discretion of the President. In 1963 the instruments of sovereignty were handed over with due pomp and circumstance; subsequently there have been many symbolic changes of street names and towns. But the hallmarks of Kenyatta's leadership were continuity, moderation and optimism. Recrimination and revenge were virtually nonexistent. Many Europeans left in 1963, but many also chose to stay or since then have come to live in Kenya, as Kenyans, and share in the multi-racial future of this progressive country.