Nordic Settler Identities in Colonial Kenya: Class, Nationality and Race in Bror and Karen Blixen's Transimperial Lives

Abstract

The British East African Protectorate began enticing white settlement to the country in early twentieth century. This article focuses on the white settler identity and experience of a Nordic couple, Bror and Karen Blixen, in colonial East Africa in the 1910s, when they shared ownership of a coffee farm near the Ngong Hills. Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke was related to the Swedish royal family, his wife and future author Karen Blixen a member of a wealthy Danish family, whose money was used to purchase the coffee farm in 1913. This article examines how the Blixens as a Nordic couple fitted in the white settler colonial community and how they related to their African servants, farm workers and neighbours. Furthermore, it discusses the problems Bror Blixen's Swedish nationality caused to the couple during World War I, when the protectorate's Swedes were suspected of harbouring German sympathies.