User:Seagull123/sandbox
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fr:Famine de 1899 au Kenya central
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The Central Kenya famine of 1899 was a devastating catastrophe in the history of Kenya. It rapidly spread from 1898 in the central region of the country, around Mount Kenya, after several successive years of weak rainfall. An invasion of desert locusts, diseases in livestock which decimated herds, and the increasing need for food for British, Swahili, and Arab traders equally contributed to a decrease in food resources. Along with the famine, a smallpox epidemic occurred, which depopulated entire regions.
The exact number of victims is not known, but estimates by several European observers vary between 50% and 90% of the population. Everyone living in the affected regions were touched by the famine, to varying degrees.
As the famine coincided with the establishment of British colonisation of the region, the inhabitants of Central Kenya did not consider it as the result of natural causes. Rather, they interpreted it as a sign of a universal crisis, pushing the equilibrium between God and society, and which manifested itself also through colonisation.
The famine led to a social restructuring of the region. It facilitated the installation of the British colonial power and European Catholic missionaries, it contributed to ethnicisation and provoked for decades collective trauma within the population.