Sir Charles EliotArticle Free Pass Sir Charles Eliot, in full
Sir Charles Norton Edgecumbe Eliot (born Jan. 8, 1862, Sibford
Gower, Oxfordshire, Eng.—died March 16, 1931, at sea, in the
Strait of Malacca), diplomat and colonial administrator who
initiated the policy of white supremacy in the British East
Africa Protectorate (now Kenya). A scholar and linguist, Eliot
served in diplomatic posts in Russia (1885), Morocco (1892),
Turkey (1893), and Washington, D.C. (1899). In 1900 he was
knighted and appointed commissioner and consul general for the
East Africa Protectorate. He collaborated with the farmers there
(notably Lord Delamere, to whom he ceded 100,000 acres [40,500
hectares] of land) and encouraged European immigration by the
wholesale award of land concessions to European settlers. By
1903 he was encountering opposition from the Colonial Office,
which felt he was proceeding too rapidly. In 1904, after being
criticized for granting a concession on land previously reserved
for the indigenous Maasai peopl