...an exceptional study... one of a handful of such studies that have important things to say to wider non-specialist audiences: to historians of empire interested in the commonalities of a world-wide imperial project; and to those in the development community who accept that, if rural development is to have a future, its past must be fully acknowledged and understood...Eroding the Commons challenges historians' as well as developers' narratives by confronting us with complexity. Officials and settlers were mostly reluctant oppressors and the Tuken were not the inept pastoralists that the narrative insisted that they must be. There were and are no easy answers to development, in Baringo or elsewhere, but there is now a clear, informed and thoughtful account of its history.
- Richard Waller, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES
This volume will be an important addition to the literature of East African pastoral peoples and is accessible to the specialist and nonspecialist alike.
- J. Terrence McCabe, ANTHROPOS
Cette monographie du district de Baringo au Kenya, centree sur la periode coloniale, est issue du travail de these de D. M. Anderson, realise au debut des annees 1980, complete et precise au cours des vingt annees qui ont suivi. Au-dela de l'interet porte a une discipline (histoire) ou a cette partie du continent africain (l'Afrique de l'Est), les themes abordes par cet ouvrage meritent de retenir toute l'attention de ceux qui s'interrogent sur les politiques de developpement et de preservation de l'environnement.
POLITIQUE AFRICAINE