Opening ParagraphWherever belief in witchcraft permeated an African society, fear prevailed and people demanded protection and control. Even though the degree of African concern about witchcraft was not always appreciated by outsiders, it was possible, at least in centralized societies, for such outsiders to discern the processes that were involved in its control. A king or a priest who failed to control the spread of witchcraft and to alleviate the fear was unlikely to maintain his authority for long. In non-centralized societies, the problem of witchcraft and the means of control were less clear-cut. Solutions were rarely obvious and easy.

Opening ParagraphIn the protection of their kaya home deep in the forest of the Mombasa hinterland, the Giriama of Kenya developed a non-centralized government based on a council of elders (kambi), and derived from age-sets. They were supported by a special secret society within the kambi whose oath and select membership were used to maintain order and determine guilt in difficult situations. In the period from approximately 1700 until sometime in the nineteenth century, the Giriama developed this form of government by drawing upon their previous experience of life in Singwaya and subsequent southward migration, upon their identification or assimilation of members into six original clans, and upon their unique environment of the kaya neighborhood to become successful cultivators, keeping cattle when circumstances allowed and emerging as the prominent traders of the Mombasa hinterland.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Boston University African Studies Center and Board of Trustees, Boston University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The International Journal of African Historical Studies.The first extensive colonial field study of African nutrition in the British colonies influenced the understanding of African diet on a scale reaching far beyond the scope of the study itself. Begun in 1926 under the supervision of John Boyd Onr and I. L. Gilks, the study compared the diets and health problems of Kenya's agricultural Kikuyu and pastoral Maasai populations.1 When Michael Worboys identifiled the important role of "science for development" in British colonial imperialism,2 he showed this Kikuyu-Maasai study to be critical because, although it began with an interest in the nutrition of livestock, not people,3 it eventually became the first attempt in the colonial empire to address the subject of human nutrition, as distinct from famine and hunger.4 As such, he argued, it launched the studies that led to the "discovery of colonial malnutrition" in the 1930s and helped to stimulate the gathering of dietary information from the British colonies throughout that decade.5 He showed that the science of the "new nutrition" helped to illuminate the malnutrition problem, but that the discovered malnutrition was mostly of recent origin. By the end of the decade, he concluded, malnutrition had come to be interpreted as an agricultural problem-a technical one which should have * I am especially grateful to Richard Waller whose contributions greatly enhanced this analysis; to Tom Spear, David Newbury, Claire Robertson, Louis Grivetti, Ted Margadant, and George Mann, who read various versions and contributed their expertise; to the anonymous readers of this journal; and to Viji Mahadavan and Leola Calzolai, who gave assistance. Any remaining shortcomings are mine. 1 50 CYNTHIA BRANTLEY a scientific solution. But because Worboys took the Orr and Gilks study's reported findings at face value (as did readers at the time), and did not investigate the particular scientific or social investigations which it involved, he was unable to see its distortions, limitations, and omissions.In this article, I explore the significance of what this study of African diet and disease in Kenya discovered, how the findings were interpreted, and how they were used. The study found that both populations had sufficient calories but that they also had some difficult health problems. Investigators concluded that Maasai, with a diet of milk and meat, were better off than were Kikuyu with a vegetarian diet. But Orr and Gilks' study was constrained from the beginning by contemporary assumptions regarding ...

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