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Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya: two rival imperial mountains at the turn of the 20th century? | 7th June, 2023

“When Kilimanjaro was, at the special request of the German Emperor, included within German East Africa, it was a matter of regret to many; but now we found in Kenya we had a mountain nearly as high, more striking in its physical features, more difficult of ascent, and possessing a flora quite as interesting as its German rival.”

At the start of the 20th Century, there was, according to James Bryce, the president of the British Alpine Club, here quoted in the Alpine Journal (1900), a rivalry between the two highest East African mountains: Kilimanjaro (5895m) and Mt Kenya (5199m). De facto, these two mountains are located in two different (and, somehow rival) European empires: German East Africa for the first one, British East Africa for the second one. The aim of this communication is to question the roots of such rivalry, by looking back at the long history of the European discovery of these two mountains, their exploration and perception by Westerners in the second half of the 19th century, and by observing the importance that each of these mountains took on at the time of European colonisation in East Africa – and then with the establishment of the German and British empires in the region.

This communication will rely on the results of a PhD thesis defended in 2021, and present the first steps of a new research on a cross-history of representations and practices about Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
IFRA Nairobi (May 19, 2023). Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya: two rival imperial mountains at the turn of the 20th century? | 7th June, 2023. IFRA Nairobi. Retrieved April 19, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/pw3o