This work explores Britain's attempt to take land from the Bantu-Luyia peoples of Western Kenya for gold mining following the discovery of gold in the North Kavirondo (NK) reserve in 1931. The discovery led to the Kenyan gold rush, in which local European settler farmers and mining prospectors converged on Kakamega. The presence of mining prospectors in Western Kenya and the move to transform a rural agrarian terrain into an industrial one had important economic, political, socio-cultural, medical, and environmental ramifications for the inhabitants. This book illuminates the struggles of mine workers and dispossessed African households by looking at their actions and reactions toward the emerging British colonial venture of the region. Fundamentally, this work captures the largely undocumented histories of 'the common people' who lived through Kenya's failed eldorado.

"In this monograph Priscilla Shilaro gives us the first full account and the first critical study in depth of what until now has been a lengthy footnote in colonial Kenyan history. . . . This book presents a vigorously pursued and very useful addendum to a social and political literature usually dominated by struggles over agricultural land." - African Studies Review, September 2009

"Recommended." - CHOICE, December 2008