The White Highlands is an area in the central uplands of Kenya. It was traditionally the homeland of indigenous Central Kenyan communities up to the colonial period, when it became the centre of European settlement in colonial Kenya; between 1902 and 1961, it was officially reserved for the exclusive use of Europeans by the colonial government.

The first European explorers and administrators used the term Highlands to refer to the region no less than 1,500 metres (5,000 ft) above sea level, which they believed was best suited climatically for Europeans to reside in. During the process of settlement, the term came to be used for the areas already settled by local African tribes. As The Crown Lands Ordinance of 1902 permitted land grants only to Europeans, the Highlands came to mean only the lands Europeans could own and manage.

To early explorers and administrators, the cool climate and absence of population over large swathes of the Highlands of Kenya made it a uniquely attractive area for European settlement in sub-tropical Africa. In 1893, the explorer Frederick Lugard, whilst lobbying for a railway in East Africa, noted that European settlement in the region was not feasible until the cooler Highlands were made accessible. This view was echoed by Sir Harry Johnston who, on completion of the Uganda Railway, noted of the Highlands:

"Here we have a territory admirably suited for a white man's country, and I can say this, with no thought of injustice to any native race, for the country in question is either utterly uninhabited for miles and miles or at most its inhabitants are wandering hunters who have no settled home, or whose fixed habitation is the lands outside the healthy area."

In 1902, Sir Charles Eliot, the British Commissioner of the Protectorate, encouraged settlement of the Highlands for farming. Eliot, a leading critic of building the railway, believed that the only way to recoup the money spent on its construction was by opening up the Highlands for farming. In his view, only European settlers and agriculture could develop the region and generate the necessary funds to support the colonial administration. Eliot's view was supported by pioneer settlers such as the 3rd Baron Delamere and Ewart Grogan, who believed that they had a civilising mission to transform the entire country into a modern industrialised "White Man's Country".

By 1903 there were about 100 European settlers in the Highlands. A large proportion of the settlers hailed from South Africa including 280 Boers from the Transvaal who settled in the Uasin Gishu plateau in 1908.

By 1914, there were around a thousand European settlers in the Highlands. In 1914, around twenty percent of the leases held in the region were held by 13 individuals or groups. The granting of leases to settlers for low prices resulted in rampant land speculation to the extent that by 1930 approximately sixty-five percent of land reserved for Europeans was not under any form of agriculturally productive activity.

When European settlement began, the Highlands were primarily inhabited by nomadic pastoralists, and the absence of settled agrarian communities allowed British officials to describe the region as uninhabited. At the time, the African population was distributed between cultivating tribes and pastoralist people. The cultivating tribes lived mainly in the high rainfall areas of Nyanza, and in the fertile areas of the slopes of Mount Kenya, the Aberdares, the Elgeyo Escarpment, and the hills of Ukambani.