Oscar Ferris Watkins

Oscar Ferris Watkins (1877 – 1943) 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.

See also

• East African Campaign (World War I)
• History of Kenya - Colonial History
• History of Tanzania - First Word War
• Elizabeth Watkins

Bibliography

• Oscar from Africa - Biography of O.F. Watkins. Radcliff Press 1995
• The Carrier Corps - Military Labour in the East African Campaign 1914-18. Geoffrey Hodges Greenwood Press NY 1986

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Name	Watkins, Oscar Ferris
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Date of birth	1877
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Date of death	1943
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