Happy Valley, Kenya

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The term Happy Valley refers to the a time and place in Kenya's colonial history. Mainly it is a reference to the party-going lifestyle of the British settlers who made the Rift Valley/Kenyan highlands their home. The white community in Kenya in the pre-WWII period was divided into two distinct factions--settlers on the one side and colonial officials and tradesmen on the other. Among both groups there was a dominance of upper-middle-class and upper-class British citizens, but the two groups oftentimes disagreed on issues ranging from land allocation to how to deal with the natives. Typically, the officials and tradesmen looked on the Happy Valley set with disdain and embarrassment. The height of the Happy Valley set's influence was in the late 1920s. The recession sparked by the 1929 Wall Street stock market crash greatly decreased the number of new arrivals to Kenya and the influx of capital. Nevertheless, by 1939 Kenya had a white community of 21,000 people.