I distinctly remember first coming across Sidney Fazan’s reports and memoranda in the Kenya National Archives in 2006. More than any other documents, Fazan’s writings had inspired in me an odd mix of delight and annoyance: delight, because Fazan was an extraordinary observer of Kenyan life and his reports were always valuable; annoyance, because delving into a Fazan memo meant hours of careful reading that stalled my personal research schedule! Colonial Kenya Observed is Fazan’s memoir, written in 1969 and rescued from obscurity by John Lonsdale. It is perhaps more a history of colonial Kenya from an administrator’s viewpoint than a personal memoir; indeed, Fazan provides few of the recollections or tales of his time in the service that we often find in first-hand accounts from the colony.

One of Kenya’s longest-serving administrators, Fazan began his career as a cadet in Nyanza (in the west) in 1911, and retired in the same location as provincial commissioner in 1942. Many of the intervening years, however, were spent in the colony’s central highlands, and his accounts about this region will likely be of most interest to readers. In Kikuyu country Fazan was first confronted with the “circumcision crisis” of 1929. He was then charged with studying the Kikuyu “land question.” He compiled 3,500 pages of evidence for the hugely important Kenya Land Commission (KLC) of 1933–34 featuring oral testimony from more than seven hundred witnesses, mostly African, and then wrote its six-hundred-page report. In 1949 Fazan returned to a troubled Kenya to live out his golden years, but his qualifications meant that the government quickly pressed him back into service on committees to study the composition of Mau Mau and hear detainees’ appeals against their sentences.

Colonial Kenya Observed begins with Lonsdale’s excellent introduction, but the book’s beautifully complementary footnotes are perhaps the editor’s most impressive contribution. Lonsdale explains the context of Fazan’s occasional omissions (e.g., situations in which loyalty to European or African colleagues sometimes colored his story) and notes the author’s (few) errors. The footnotes also contribute a wide range of up-to-date secondary readings on both Kenya and the British Empire, as well as little-known primary sources for colonial Kenya. Three appendixes provide a window into the “official mind” in the colonies and raise questions about the limits of what an administrator might conceivably achieve.

Fazan speaks to a number of important topics that engage scholars of colonial Africa, especially the creation of customary law and the mechanisms of indirect rule and chiefship. Moreover, his memoir is a timely reminder of how the “unfashionable” accounts of colonial officials can be wonderful sources. (For example, Fazan provides a rare glimpse into the lives of the Pokomo and on changing comportment among African women around the First World War). Perhaps the greatest value of Fazan’s history, though, is that it feels like we can trust him, especially because he gives credit where credit is due. At one point he demonstrates his respect for traditional agricultural practices, and at another point praises the notorious Mau Mau leader General Kago. He is also quick to interrogate the failures of the British system, lambasting the low rates of pay for chiefs and headmen, the poor treatment of African carriers in the First World War, and the refusal of white settlers in the highlands to ease their positions on landholding and labor requirements.

Perhaps most significantly, Fazan’s text speaks directly to the major contemporary debate about colonialism. Even in academic circles, the British Empire (and by extension, its officials) is often depicted as immoral and parasitic, while some apologists—Niall Ferguson prominently among them—disagree. Fazan’s sober memoir reminds us that the realities of colonialism were always more complex. Consider the all-important question of land: through his exhaustive work for the KLC, Fazan concluded that the Kikuyu had lost only 7 percent of their lands to settlers, for which they received compensation. This provides an important caution against contemporary assertions about European “theft” of African land. But, Fazan continues, because the settler system was permitted to remain dominant, further population growth—combined with the githaka system of tenure—meant that land shortages appeared. Perhaps it was this independence of thought that inspired former Mau Mau fighters to visit Fazan’s home in 1961 to thank him for his “even-handed justice” in dealing with their cases.

Fazan was an official—like many others—who sacrificed much for little pay in a genuine effort to make Kenya “work.” But perennially stuck “between the devil and the deep blue sea” (155), as Fazan puts it, officials could never make Africans, settlers, and the colonial and imperial governments all happy, particularly where land was involved. His memoir will be important reading for those interested in colonial Africa, and it reminds us that the kind of dispassionate, thoughtful scholarship that Fanzan practiced, free of wild claims, should guide our studies of Africans and Britons.