Oscar Ferris Watkins

Who was Oscar Ferris Watkins?

Oscar Ferris Watkins was a British colonial administrator, Commandant of the East African Carrier Corps in the First World War. After the war he was acting Kenya Chief Native Commissioner and a Provincial Commissioner, and first editor of a Swahili newspaper Baraza.

Educated at Marlborough and a postgraduate at All Souls College, Oxford, by virtue of being a Founder's Kin, Watkins enlisted in ranks of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry in the Second Boer War subsequently joining the South African Police. In 1907 he moved to Kenya and as a junior District Commissioner in Kenya he was a magistrate in the Kenya Slave courts, freeing slaves from Arab slavers on the East African coast and developing a lasting interest in Swahili culture.

During the First World War Watkins setup the Carrier Corps and strove to organise an effective force while at the same time protecting the hundreds of thousands of African porters conscripted into the force from the excessive demands of the British Military. After the war, as acting Kenya Chief Native Commissioner his active stance in protecting the land rights of the native Kenya tribes against the encroachments of white Kenya Settler interests earned him the enmity of the governor Sir Edward Denham.