Mau Mau rebellion

Mau Mau rebellion
Part of the British Kenya
Result	British victory

Belligerents

 United Kingdom

• 
  Kenya
• 
  Uganda
•  Southern Rhodesia

Mau Mau rebels^[a]

• Kenya Land and Freedom Army

Commanders and leaders Winston Churchill
(1951–1955)
Anthony Eden
(1955–1957)
Harold Macmillan
(1957–1960)
Ian Henderson
George Erskine
Kenneth O'Connor
Evelyn Baring
Terence Gavaghan Dedan Kimathi 
Musa Mwariama
Waruhiu Itote
Stanley Mathenge (MIA)
Kubu Kubu Strength 10,000 regular troops
21,000 police
25,000 Kikuyu Home Guard^[2][3] 35,000+ Members^[4]Casualties and losses 3,000 native Kenyan police and soldiers killed^[5] 12,000–20,000+ killed (including 1,090 executed)^[6]
2,633 captured
2,714 surrendered

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The Mau Mau rebellion (1952–1960), also known as the Mau Mau uprising, Mau Mau revolt, or Kenya Emergency, was a war in the British Kenya Colony (1920–1963) between the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), also known as the Mau Mau, and the British authorities.^[7] Dominated by Kikuyu, Meru and Embu fighters, the KLFA also comprised units of Kamba^[8] and Maasai who fought against the European colonists in Kenya, the British Army, and the local Kenya Regiment (British colonists, local auxiliary militia, and pro-British Kikuyu).^[9][b]

The capture of rebel leader Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi on 21 October 1956 signalled the defeat of the Mau Mau, and essentially ended the British military campaign.^[10] However, the rebellion survived until after Kenya's independence from Britain, driven mainly by the Meru units led by Field Marshal Musa Mwariama. General Baimungi, one of the last Mau Mau leaders, was killed shortly after Kenya attained self-rule.^[11]

The KLFA failed to capture widespread public support.

The origin of the term Mau Mau is uncertain. According to some members of Mau Mau, they never referred to themselves as such, instead preferring the military title Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA).^[19] Some publications, such as Fred Majdalany's State of Emergency: The Full Story of Mau Mau, claim it was an anagram of Uma Uma (which means "Get out! Get out!") and was a military codeword based on a secret language game Kikuyu boys used to play at the time of their circumcision. Majdalany also says the British simply used the name as a label for the Kikuyu ethnic community without assigning any specific definition.^[20]

Akamba people say the name Mau Mau came from Ma Umau meaning "Our Grandfathers".^{[citation needed]} The term was first used during a pastoralists revolt against de-stocking that took place in 1938 led by Muindi Mbingu, during which he urged the colonists to leave Kenya so that his people (the Kamba) could live freely like the time of "Our Grandfathers" ("Twenda kwikala ta maau mau maitu, tuithye ngombe ta Maau mau maitu, nundu nthi ino ni ya maau mau maitu").^{[This quote needs a citation][citation needed]}

As the movement progressed, a Swahili backronym was adopted: "Mzungu Aende Ulaya, Mwafrika Apate Uhuru" meaning "Let the foreigner go back abroad, let the African regain independence".^[21] J. M. Kariuki, a member of Mau Mau who was detained during the conflict, suggests the British preferred to use the term Mau Mau instead of KLFA to deny the Mau Mau rebellion international legitimacy.^[22] Kariuki also wrote that the term Mau Mau was adopted by the rebellion in order to counter what they regarded as colonial propaganda.^[21]

Author and activist

The armed rebellion of the Mau Mau was the culminating response to colonial rule.^[25][26] Although there had been previous instances of violent resistance to colonialism, the Mau Mau revolt was the most prolonged and violent anti-colonial warfare in the British Kenya colony. From the start, the land was the primary British interest in Kenya,^[24] which had "some of the richest agricultural soils in the world, mostly in districts where the elevation and climate make it possible for Europeans to reside permanently".^[27] Though declared a colony in 1920, the formal British colonial presence in Kenya began with a proclamation on 1 July 1895, in which Kenya was claimed as a British protectorate.^[28]

Even before 1895, however, Britain's presence in Kenya was marked by

Opposition to British imperialism had existed from the start of British occupation. The most notable include the Nandi Resistance led by Koitalel Arap Samoei of 1895–1905;^[32] the Giriama Uprising led by Mekatilili wa Menza of 1913–1914;^[33] the women's revolt against forced labour in Murang'a in 1947;^[34] and the Kolloa Affray of 1950.^[35] None of the armed uprisings during the beginning of British colonialism in Kenya were successful.^[36] The nature of fighting in Kenya led Winston Churchill to express concern about the scale of the fighting: "No doubt the clans should have been punished. 160 have now been killed outright without any further casualties on our side.… It looks like a butchery. If the H. of C. gets hold of it, all our plans in E.A.P. will be under a cloud. Surely it cannot be necessary to go on killing these defenceless people on such an enormous scale."^[37]

Settler societies during the colonial period could own a disproportionate share of land.^[39] The first settlers arrived in 1902 as part of Governor Charles Eliot's plan to have a settler economy pay for the Uganda Railway.^[40][41] The success of this settler economy would depend heavily on the availability of land, labour and capital,^[42] and so, over the next three decades, the colonial government and settlers consolidated their control over Kenyan land, and forced native Kenyans to become wage labourers.

Until the mid-1930s, the two primary complaints were low native Kenyan wages and the requirement to carry an identity document, the kipande.^[43] From the early 1930s, however, two others began to come to prominence: effective and elected African-political-representation, and land.^[43] The British response to this clamour for agrarian reform came in the early 1930s when they set up the Carter Land Commission.^[44]

The Commission reported in 1934, but its conclusions, recommendations and concessions to Kenyans were so conservative that any chance of a peaceful resolution to native Kenyan land-hunger was ended.

The colonial government and white farmers also wanted cheap labour[51] which, for a period, the government acquired from native Kenyans through force.^[48] Confiscating the land itself helped to create a pool of wage labourers, but the colony introduced measures that forced more native Kenyans to submit to wage labour: the introduction of the Hut and Poll Taxes (1901 and 1910 respectively);^[48][52] the establishment of reserves for each ethnic group,^[53][c] which isolated ethnic groups and often exacerbated overcrowding;^{[citation needed]} the discouragement of native Kenyans' growing cash crops;^[48] the Masters and Servants Ordinance (1906) and an identification pass known as the kipande (1918) to control the movement of labour and to curb desertion;^[48][54] and the exemption of wage labourers from forced labour and other detested obligations such as conscription.^[55][56]

Native labourer categories

Native Kenyan labourers were of three categories: squatter, contract, or casual.

In the early 1920s, though, despite the presence of 100,000 squatters and tens of thousands more wage labourers,[62] there was still not enough native Kenyan labour available to satisfy the settlers' needs.^[63] The colonial government duly tightened the measures to force more Kenyans to become low-paid wage-labourers on settler farms.^[64]

The colonial government used the measures brought in as part of its land expropriation and labour 'encouragement' efforts to craft the third plank of its growth strategy for its settler economy: subordinating African farming to that of the Europeans.^[48] Nairobi also assisted the settlers with rail and road networks, subsidies on freight charges, agricultural and veterinary services, and credit and loan facilities.^[42] The near-total neglect of native farming during the first two decades of European settlement was noted by the East Africa Commission.^[65]

The resentment of colonial rule would not have been decreased by the wanting provision of medical services for native Kenyans,^[66] nor by the fact that in 1923, for example, "the maximum amount that could be considered to have been spent on services provided exclusively for the benefit of the native population was slightly over one-quarter of the taxes paid by them".^[38] The tax burden on Europeans in the early 1920s, meanwhile, was very light relative to their income.^[38] Interwar infrastructure-development was also largely paid for by the indigenous population.^[67]

Kenyan employees were often poorly treated by their European employers, with some settlers arguing that native Kenyans "were as children and should be treated as such". Some settlers flogged their servants for petty offences. To make matters even worse, native Kenyan workers were poorly served by colonial labour-legislation and a prejudiced legal-system. The vast majority of Kenyan employees' violations of labour legislation were settled with "rough justice" meted out by their employers. Most colonial magistrates appear to have been unconcerned by the illegal practice of settler-administered flogging; indeed, during the 1920s, flogging was the magisterial punishment-of-choice for native Kenyan convicts. The principle of punitive sanctions against workers was not removed from the Kenyan labour statutes until the 1950s.^[68]

As a result of the situation in the highlands and growing job opportunities in the cities, thousands of Kikuyu migrated into cities in search of work, contributing to the doubling of Nairobi's population between 1938 and 1952.^[70] At the same time, there was a small, but growing, class of Kikuyu landowners who consolidated Kikuyu landholdings and forged ties with the colonial administration, leading to an economic rift within the Kikuyu.

Mau Mau warfare

Mau Mau were the militant wing of a growing clamour for political representation and freedom in Kenya. The first attempt to form a countrywide political party began on 1 October 1944.^[71] This fledgling organisation was called the Kenya African Study Union. Harry Thuku was the first chairman, but he soon resigned. There is dispute over Thuku's reason for leaving KASU: Bethwell Ogot says Thuku "found the responsibility too heavy";^[71] David Anderson states that "he walked out in disgust" as the militant section of KASU took the initiative.^[72] KASU changed its name to the Kenya African Union (KAU) in 1946. Author Wangari Maathai writes that many of the organizers were ex-soldiers who fought for the British in Ceylon, Somalia, and Burma during the Second World War. When they returned to Kenya, they were never paid and did not receive recognition for their service, whereas their British counterparts were awarded medals and received land, sometimes from the Kenyan veterans.^[73]

The failure of KAU to attain any significant reforms or redress of grievances from the colonial authorities shifted the political initiative to younger and more militant figures within the native Kenyan trade union movement, among the squatters on the settler estates in the Rift Valley and in KAU branches in Nairobi and the Kikuyu districts of central province.^[74] Around 1943, residents of Olenguruone Settlement radicalised the traditional practice of oathing, and extended oathing to women and children.^[75] By the mid-1950s, 90% of Kikuyu, Embu and Meru were oathed.^[76] On 3 October 1952, Mau Mau claimed their first European victim when they stabbed a woman to death near her home in Thika.^[77] Six days later, on 9 October, Senior Chief Waruhiu was shot dead in broad daylight in his car,^[78] which was an important blow against the colonial government.^[79] Waruhiu had been one of the strongest supporters of the British presence in Kenya. His assassination gave Evelyn Baring the final impetus to request permission from the Colonial Office to declare a State of Emergency.^[80]

The Mau Mau attacks were mostly well organised and planned.

...the insurgents' lack of heavy weaponry and the heavily entrenched police and Home Guard positions meant that Mau Mau attacks were restricted to nighttime and where loyalist positions were weak. When attacks did commence they were fast and brutal, as insurgents were easily able to identify loyalists because they were often local to those communities themselves. The Lari massacre was by comparison rather outstanding and in contrast to regular Mau Mau strikes which more often than not targeted only loyalists without such massive civilian casualties. "Even the attack upon Lari, in the view of the rebel commanders was strategic and specific."^[81]

The Mau Mau command, contrary to the Home Guard who were stigmatised as "the running dogs of British Imperialism",^[82] were relatively well educated. General Gatunga had previously been a respected and well-read Christian teacher in his local Kikuyu community. He was known to meticulously record his attacks in a series of five notebooks, which when executed were often swift and strategic, targeting loyalist community leaders he had previously known as a teacher.^[83]

The Mau Mau military strategy was mainly guerrilla attacks launched under the cover of darkness. They used improvised and stolen weapons such as guns, as well as weapons such as machetes and bows and arrows in their attacks.^[84][85] They maimed cattle and, in one case, poisoned a herd.^[86]

In addition to physical warfare, the Mau Mau rebellion also generated a propaganda war, where  both the British and Mau Mau fighters battled for the hearts and minds of Kenya's population. Mau Mau propaganda represented the apex of an 'information war' that had been fought since 1945, between colonial information staff and African intellectuals, newspaper editors.^[87] The Mau Mau had learned much from - and built upon - the experience and advice of newspaper editors since 1945. In some cases, the editors of various publications in the colony were directly involved in producing Mau Mau propaganda. British Officials struggled to compete with the 'hybrid, porous, and responsive character' during the rebellion, and faced the same challenges in responding to Mau Mau propaganda, particularly in instances where the Mau Mau would use creative ways such as hymns to win and maintain followers.^[88] This was far more effective than government newspapers; however, once colonial officials brought the insurgency under control by late 1954, information officials gained an uncontested arena through which they won the propaganda war.^[87]

Women formed a core part of the Mau Mau, especially in maintaining supply lines. Initially able to avoid the suspicion, they moved through colonial spaces and between Mau Mau hideouts and strongholds, to deliver vital supplies and services to guerrilla fighters including food, ammunition, medical care, and of course, information. Women such as Wamuyu Gakuru, exemplified this key role.^[89] An unknown number also fought in the war, with the most high-ranking being Field Marshal Muthoni.

British reaction

The British and international view was that Mau Mau was a savage, violent, and depraved tribal cult, an expression of unrestrained emotion rather than reason. Mau Mau was "perverted tribalism" that sought to take the Kikuyu people back to "the bad old days" before British rule.^[90][91] The official British explanation of the revolt did not include the insights of agrarian and agricultural experts, of economists and historians, or even of Europeans who had spent a long period living amongst the Kikuyu such as Louis Leakey. Not for the first time,^[92] the British instead relied on the purported insights of the ethnopsychiatrist; with Mau Mau, it fell to Dr. John Colin Carothers to perform the desired analysis. This ethnopsychiatric analysis guided British psychological warfare, which painted Mau Mau as "an irrational force of evil, dominated by bestial impulses and influenced by world communism", and the later official study of the uprising, the Corfield Report.^[93][94]

The psychological war became of critical importance to military and civilian leaders who tried to "emphasise that there was in effect a civil war, and that the struggle was not black versus white", attempting to isolate Mau Mau from the Kikuyu, and the Kikuyu from the rest of the colony's population and the world outside. In driving a wedge between Mau Mau and the Kikuyu generally, these propaganda efforts essentially played no role, though they could apparently claim an important contribution to the isolation of Mau Mau from the non-Kikuyu sections of the population.^[95]

By the mid-1960s, the view of Mau Mau as simply irrational activists was being challenged by memoirs of former members and leaders that portrayed Mau Mau as an essential, if radical, component of African nationalism in Kenya and by academic studies that analysed the movement as a modern and nationalist response to the unfairness and oppression of colonial domination.^[96]

There continues to be vigorous debate within Kenyan society and among the academic community within and outside Kenya regarding the nature of Mau Mau and its aims, as well as the response to and effects of the uprising.^[97][98] Nevertheless, partly because as many Kikuyu fought against Mau Mau on the side of the colonial government as joined them in rebellion,^[16] the conflict is now often regarded in academic circles as an intra-Kikuyu civil war,^[98][99] a characterisation that remains extremely unpopular in Kenya. In August 1952, Kenyatta told a Kikuyu audience "Mau Mau has spoiled the country...Let Mau Mau perish forever. All people should search for Mau Mau and kill it".^[100][101] Kenyatta described the conflict in his memoirs as a civil war rather than a rebellion.^[102] One reason that the revolt was largely limited to the Kikuyu people was, in part, that they had suffered the most as a result of the negative aspects of British colonialism.^[103][104]

Wunyabari O. Maloba regards the rise of the Mau Mau movement as "without doubt, one of the most important events in recent African history".

Broadly speaking, throughout Kikuyu history, there have been two traditions: moderate-conservative and radical.^[111] Despite the differences between them, there has been a continuous debate and dialogue between these traditions, leading to a great political awareness among the Kikuyu.^[111][112] By 1950, these differences, and the impact of colonial rule, had given rise to three native Kenyan political blocs: conservative, moderate nationalist and militant nationalist.^[113] It has also been argued that Mau Mau was not explicitly national, either intellectually or operationally.^[114]

Bruce Berman argues that, "While Mau Mau was clearly not a tribal atavism seeking a return to the past, the answer to the question of 'was it nationalism?' must be yes and no."^[115] As the Mau Mau rebellion wore on, the violence forced the spectrum of opinion within the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru to polarise and harden into the two distinct camps of loyalist and Mau Mau.^[116] This neat division between loyalists and Mau Mau was a product of the conflict, rather than a cause or catalyst of it, with the violence becoming less ambiguous over time,^[117] in a similar manner to other situations.^[118][119]

British reaction to the uprising

The British army accepted the gravity of the uprising months before the politicians, but its appeals to London and Nairobi were ignored.[121] On 30 September 1952, Evelyn Baring arrived in Kenya to permanently take over from Potter; Baring was given no warning by Mitchell or the Colonial Office about the gathering maelstrom into which he was stepping.^[77]

Aside from military operations against Mau Mau fighters in the forests, the British attempt to defeat the movement broadly came in two stages: the first, relatively limited in scope, came during the period in which they had still failed to accept the seriousness of the revolt; the second came afterwards. During the first stage, the British tried to decapitate the movement by declaring a State of Emergency before arresting 180 alleged Mau Mau leaders in Operation Jock Scott and subjecting six of them (the Kapenguria Six) to a show trial; the second stage began in earnest in 1954, when they undertook a series of major economic, military and penal initiatives.^{[citation needed]}

The second stage had three main planks: a large military-sweep of Nairobi leading to the internment of tens of thousands of the city's suspected Mau Mau members and sympathisers ( Operation Anvil); the enacting of major agrarian reform (the

The harshness of the British response was inflated by two factors. First, the settler government in Kenya was, even before the insurgency, probably the most openly racist one in the British empire, with the settlers' violent prejudice attended by an uncompromising determination to retain their grip on power[124] and half-submerged fears that, as a tiny minority, they could be overwhelmed by the indigenous population.^[125] Its representatives were so keen on aggressive action that George Erskine referred to them as "the White Mau Mau".^[125] Second, the brutality of Mau Mau attacks on civilians made it easy for the movement's opponents—including native Kenyan and loyalist security forces—to adopt a totally dehumanised view of Mau Mau adherents.^[124]

Resistance to both the Mau Mau and the British response was illustrated by Ciokaraine M'Barungu who famously asked that the British colonial forces not destroy the food used by her villagers, since its destruction could potentially starve the entire region. Instead, she urged the colonial forces guard the yams and bananas and stop the Mau Mau from killing any more residents.^[126]

A variety of coercive techniques were initiated by the colonial authorities to punish and break Mau Mau's support: Baring ordered punitive communal-labour, collective fines and other collective punishments, and further confiscation of land and property.^[127] By early 1954, tens of thousands of head of livestock had been taken, and were allegedly never returned.^[128] Detailed accounts of the policy of seizing livestock from Kenyans suspected of supporting Mau Mau rebels were finally released in April 2012.^[129]

State of emergency declared (October 1952)

On 20 October 1952, Governor Baring signed an order declaring a state of emergency. Early the next morning, Operation Jock Scott was launched: the British carried out a mass-arrest of Jomo Kenyatta and 180 other alleged Mau Mau leaders within Nairobi.^[130][131] Jock Scott did not decapitate the movement's leadership as hoped, since news of the impending operation was leaked. Thus, while the moderates on the wanted list awaited capture, the real militants, such as Dedan Kimathi and Stanley Mathenge (both later principal leaders of Mau Mau's forest armies), fled to the forests.^[132]

The day after the round up, another prominent loyalist chief, Nderi, was hacked to pieces,^[133] and a series of gruesome murders against settlers were committed throughout the months that followed.^[134] The violent and random nature of British tactics during the months after Jock Scott served merely to alienate ordinary Kikuyu and drive many of the wavering majority into Mau Mau's arms.^[135] Three battalions of the King's African Rifles were recalled from Uganda, Tanganyika and Mauritius, giving the regiment five battalions in all in Kenya, a total of 3,000 native Kenyan troops.^[130] To placate settler opinion, one battalion of British troops, from the Lancashire Fusiliers, was also flown in from Egypt to Nairobi on the first day of Operation Jock Scott.^[136] In November 1952, Baring requested assistance from the MI5 Security Service. For the next year, the Service's A.M. MacDonald would reorganise the Special Branch of the Kenya Police, promote collaboration with Special Branches in adjacent territories, and oversee coordination of all intelligence activity "to secure the intelligence Government requires".^[137]

In January 1953, six of the most prominent detainees from Jock Scott, including Kenyatta, were put on trial, primarily to justify the declaration of the Emergency to critics in London.^[132][139] The trial itself was claimed to have featured a suborned lead defence-witness, a bribed judge, and other serious violations of the right to a fair trial.^{[citation needed]}

Native Kenyan political activity was permitted to resume at the end of the military phase of the Emergency.^[140]

Military operations

The onset of the Emergency led hundreds, and eventually thousands, of Mau Mau adherents to flee to the forests, where a decentralised leadership had already begun setting up platoons.^[141] The primary zones of Mau Mau military strength were the Aberdares and the forests around Mount Kenya, whilst a passive support-wing was fostered outside these areas.^[142] Militarily, the British defeated Mau Mau in four years (1952–1956)^[143] using a more expansive version of "coercion through exemplary force".^[144] In May 1953, the decision was made to send General George Erskine to oversee the restoration of order in the colony.^[145]

By September 1953, the British knew the leading personalities in Mau Mau, and the capture and 68 hour interrogation of

By 1954, Nairobi was regarded as the nerve centre of Mau Mau operations.^[153] The insurgents in the highlands of the Aberdares and Mt Kenya were being supplied provisions and weapons by supporters in Nairobi via couriers.^[154] Anvil was the ambitious attempt to eliminate Mau Mau's presence within Nairobi in one fell swoop. 25,000 members of British security forces under the control of General George Erskine were deployed as Nairobi was sealed off and underwent a sector-by-sector purge. All native Kenyans were taken to temporary barbed-wire enclosures. Those who were not Kikuyu, Embu or Meru were released; those who were remained in detention for screening.^[e]

Whilst the operation itself was conducted by Europeans, most suspected members of Mau Mau were picked out of groups of the Kikuyu-Embu-Meru detainees by a native Kenyan informer. Male suspects were then taken off for further screening, primarily at Langata Screening Camp, whilst women and children were readied for 'repatriation' to the reserves (many of those slated for deportation had never set foot in the reserves before). Anvil lasted for two weeks, after which the capital had been cleared of all but certifiably loyal Kikuyu; 20,000 Mau Mau suspects had been taken to Langata, and 30,000 more had been deported to the reserves.^[156]

Air power

For an extended period of time, the chief British weapon against the forest fighters was air power. Between June 1953 and October 1955, the RAF provided a significant contribution to the conflict—and, indeed, had to, for the army was preoccupied with providing security in the reserves until January 1955, and it was the only service capable of both psychologically influencing and inflicting considerable casualties on the Mau Mau fighters operating in the dense forests. Lack of timely and accurate intelligence meant bombing was rather haphazard, but almost 900 insurgents had been killed or wounded by air attacks by June 1954, and it did cause forest gangs to disband, lower their morale, and induce their pronounced relocation from the forests to the reserves.^[157]

At first armed

After the Lari massacre for example, British planes dropped leaflets showing graphic pictures of the Kikuyu women and children who had been hacked to death. Unlike the rather indiscriminate activities of British ground forces, the use of air power was more restrained (though there is disagreement^[162] on this point), and air attacks were initially permitted only in the forests. Operation Mushroom extended bombing beyond the forest limits in May 1954, and Churchill consented to its continuation in January 1955.^[157]

Swynnerton Plan

Baring knew the massive deportations to the already-overcrowded reserves could only make things worse. Refusing to give more land to the Kikuyu in the reserves, which could have been seen as a concession to Mau Mau, Baring turned instead in 1953 to Roger Swynnerton, Kenya's assistant director of agriculture.^[163][164] The primary goal of the Swynnerton Plan was the creation of family holdings large enough to keep families self-sufficient in food and to enable them to practise alternate husbandry, which would generate a cash income.^[165]

The projected costs of the Swynnerton Plan were too high for the cash-strapped colonial government, so Baring tweaked repatriation and augmented the Swynnerton Plan with plans for a massive expansion of the Pipeline coupled with a system of work camps to make use of detainee labour. All Kikuyu employed for public works projects would now be employed on Swynnerton's poor-relief programmes, as would many detainees in the work camps.^[166][167]

Detention programme

When the mass deportations of Kikuyu to the reserves began in 1953, Baring and Erskine ordered all Mau Mau suspects to be screened. Of the scores of screening camps which sprang up, only fifteen were officially sanctioned by the colonial government. Larger detention camps were divided into compounds. The screening centres were staffed by settlers who had been appointed temporary district-officers by Baring.^[169]

Thomas Askwith, the official tasked with designing the British 'detention and rehabilitation' programme during the summer and autumn of 1953, termed his system the Pipeline.^[170] The British did not initially conceive of rehabilitating Mau Mau suspects through brute force and other ill-treatment—Askwith's final plan, submitted to Baring in October 1953, was intended as "a complete blueprint for winning the war against Mau Mau using socioeconomic and civic reform".^[171] What developed, however, has been described as a British gulag.^[f]

The Pipeline operated a white-grey-black classification system: 'whites' were co-operative detainees, and were repatriated back to the reserves; 'greys' had been oathed but were reasonably compliant, and were moved down the Pipeline to works camps in their local districts before release; and 'blacks' were the 'hard core' of Mau Mau. These were moved up the Pipeline to special detention camps. Thus a detainee's position in Pipeline was a straightforward reflection of how cooperative the Pipeline personnel deemed her or him to be. Cooperation was itself defined in terms of a detainee's readiness to confess their Mau Mau oath. Detainees were screened and re-screened for confessions and intelligence, then re-classified accordingly.^[172]

A detainee's journey between two locations along the Pipeline could sometimes last days. During transit, there was frequently little or no food and water provided, and seldom any sanitation. Once in camp, talking was forbidden outside the detainees' accommodation huts, though improvised communication was rife. Such communication included propaganda and disinformation, which went by such names as the Kinongo Times, designed to encourage fellow detainees not to give up hope and so to minimise the number of those who confessed their oath and cooperated with camp authorities. Forced labour was performed by detainees on projects like the thirty-seven-mile-long South Yatta irrigation furrow.^[174] Family outside and other considerations led many detainees to confess.^[175]

During the first year after Operation Anvil, colonial authorities had little success in forcing detainees to co-operate. Camps and compounds were overcrowded, forced-labour systems were not yet perfected, screening teams were not fully coordinated, and the use of torture was not yet systematised.^[176] This failure was partly due to the lack of manpower and resources, as well as the vast numbers of detainees. Officials could scarcely process them all, let alone get them to confess their oaths. Assessing the situation in the summer of 1955, Alan Lennox-Boyd wrote of his "fear that the net figure of detainees may still be rising. If so the outlook is grim."^[176] Black markets flourished during this period, with the native Kenyan guards helping to facilitate trading. It was possible for detainees to bribe guards in order to obtain items or stay punishment.^[174]

Interrogations and confessions

By late 1955, however, the Pipeline had become a fully operational, well-organised system. Guards were regularly shifted around the Pipeline too in order to prevent relationships developing with detainees and so undercut the black markets, and inducements and punishments became better at discouraging fraternising with the enemy.^[178] The grinding nature of the improved detention and interrogation regimen began to produce results. Most detainees confessed, and the system produced ever greater numbers of spies and informers within the camps, while others switched sides in a more open, official fashion, leaving detention behind to take an active role in interrogations, even sometimes administering beatings.^[178]

The most famous example of side-switching was Peter Muigai Kenyatta—Jomo Kenyatta's son—who, after confessing, joined screeners at Athi River Camp, later travelling throughout the Pipeline to assist in interrogations.^[179] Suspected informers and spies within a camp were treated in the time-honoured Mau Mau fashion: the preferred method of execution was strangulation then mutilation: "It was just like in the days before our detention", explained one Mau Mau member later. "We did not have our own jails to hold an informant in, so we would strangle him and then cut his tongue out." The end of 1955 also saw screeners being given a freer hand in interrogation, and harsher conditions than straightforward confession were imposed on detainees before they were deemed 'cooperative' and eligible for final release.^[178]

While oathing, for practical reasons, within the Pipeline was reduced to an absolute minimum, as many new initiates as possible were oathed. A newcomer who refused to take the oath often faced the same fate as a recalcitrant outside the camps: they were murdered. "The detainees would strangle them with their blankets or, using blades fashioned from the corrugated-iron roofs of some of the barracks, would slit their throats", writes Elkins.^[181] The camp authorities' preferred method of capital punishment was public hanging. Commandants were told to clamp down hard on intra-camp oathing, with several commandants hanging anyone suspected of administering oaths.^[178]

Even as the Pipeline became more sophisticated, detainees still organised themselves within it, setting up committees and selecting leaders for their camps, as well as deciding on their own "rules to live by". Perhaps the most famous compound leader was Josiah Mwangi Kariuki. Punishments for violating the "rules to live by" could be severe.^[174]

European missionaries and native Kenyan Christians played their part by visiting camps to evangelise and encourage compliance with the colonial authorities, providing intelligence, and sometimes even assisting in interrogation. Detainees regarded such preachers with nothing but contempt.^[182]

The lack of decent sanitation in the camps meant that epidemics of diseases such as

While the Pipeline was primarily designed for adult males, a few thousand women and young girls were detained at an all-women camp at Kamiti, as well as a number of unaccompanied young children. Dozens of babies[189] were born to women in captivity: "We really do need these cloths for the children as it is impossible to keep them clean and tidy while dressed in dirty pieces of sacking and blanket", wrote one colonial officer.^[190] Wamumu Camp was set up solely for all the unaccompanied boys in the Pipeline, though hundreds, maybe thousands, of boys moved around the adult parts of the Pipeline.

Works camps

There were originally two types of works camps envisioned by Baring: the first type were based in Kikuyu districts with the stated purpose of achieving the Swynnerton Plan; the second were punitive camps, designed for the 30,000 Mau Mau suspects who were deemed unfit to return to the reserves. These

Colonial officers also saw the second sort of works camps as a way of ensuring that any confession was legitimate and as a final opportunity to extract intelligence. Probably the worst works camp to have been sent to was the one run out of Embakasi Prison, for Embakasi was responsible for the Embakasi Airport, the construction of which was demanded to be finished before the Emergency came to an end. The airport was a massive project with an unquenchable thirst for labour, and the time pressures ensured the detainees' forced labour was especially hard.^[178]

Villagisation programme

If military operations in the forests and Operation Anvil were the first two phases of Mau Mau's defeat, Erskine expressed the need and his desire for a third and final phase: cut off all the militants' support in the reserves.

So it was that in June 1954, the War Council took the decision to undertake a full-scale forced-resettlement programme of Kiambu, Nyeri, Murang'a and Embu Districts to cut off Mau Mau's supply lines.[196] Within eighteen months, 1,050,899 Kikuyu in the reserves were inside 804 villages consisting of some 230,000 huts.^[197] The government termed them "protected villages", purportedly to be built along "the same lines as the villages in the North of England",^[198] though the term was actually a "euphemism for the fact that hundreds of thousands of civilians were corralled, often against their will, into settlements behind barbed-wire fences and watch towers."^[144]

While some of these villages were to protect loyalist Kikuyu, "most were little more than concentration camps to punish Mau Mau sympathizers."^[199] The villagisation programme was the coup de grâce for Mau Mau.^[199] By the end of the following summer, Lieutenant General Lathbury no longer needed Lincoln bombers for raids because of a lack of targets,^[157] and, by late 1955, Lathbury felt so sure of final victory that he reduced army forces to almost pre-Mau Mau levels.^[200]

He noted, however, that the British should have "no illusions about the future. Mau Mau has not been cured: it has been suppressed. The thousands who have spent a long time in detention must have been embittered by it. Nationalism is still a very potent force and the African will pursue his aim by other means. Kenya is in for a very tricky political future."^[157]

The government's public relations officer, Granville Roberts, presented villagisation as a good opportunity for rehabilitation, particularly of women and children, but it was, in fact, first and foremost designed to break Mau Mau and protect loyalist Kikuyu, a fact reflected in the extremely limited resources made available to the Rehabilitation and Community Development Department.^[202] Refusal to move could be punished with the destruction of property and livestock, and the roofs were usually ripped off of homes whose occupants demonstrated reluctance.^[203] Villagisation also solved the practical and financial problems associated with a further, massive expansion of the Pipeline programme,^[204] and the removal of people from their land hugely assisted the enaction of Swynnerton Plan.^[199]

The villages were surrounded by deep, spike-bottomed trenches and barbed wire, and the villagers themselves were watched over by members of the Kikuyu Home Guard, often neighbours and relatives. In short, rewards or collective punishments such as curfews could be served much more readily after villagisation, and this quickly broke Mau Mau's passive wing.^[205] Though there were degrees of difference between the villages,^[206] the overall conditions engendered by villagisation meant that, by early 1955, districts began reporting starvation and malnutrition.^[207] One provincial commissioner blamed child hunger on parents deliberately withholding food, saying the latter were aware of the "propaganda value of apparent malnutrition".^[208]

The Red Cross helped mitigate the food shortages, but even they were told to prioritise loyalist areas.^[208] The Baring government's medical department issued reports about "the alarming number of deaths occurring amongst children in the 'punitive' villages", and the "political" prioritisation of Red Cross relief.^[208]

One of the colony's ministers blamed the "bad spots" in Central Province on the mothers of the children for "not realis[ing] the great importance of proteins", and one former missionary reported that it "was terribly pitiful how many of the children and the older Kikuyu were dying. They were so emaciated and so very susceptible to any kind of disease that came along".^[188] Of the 50,000 deaths which John Blacker attributed to the Emergency, half were children under the age of ten.^[210]

The lack of food did not just affect the children, of course. The Overseas Branch of the British Red Cross commented on the "women who, from progressive undernourishment, had been unable to carry on with their work".^[211]

Disease prevention was not helped by the colony's policy of returning sick detainees to receive treatment in the reserves,

Kenyans were granted nearly[217] all of the demands made by the KAU in 1951.

On 18 January 1955, the Governor-General of Kenya, Evelyn Baring, offered an amnesty to Mau Mau activists. The offer was that they would not face prosecution for previous offences, but might still be detained. European settlers were appalled at the leniency of the offer. On 10 June 1955 with no response forthcoming, the offer of amnesty to the Mau Mau was revoked.

In June 1956, a programme of land reform increased the land holdings of the Kikuyu.^[218] This was coupled with a relaxation of the ban on native Kenyans growing coffee, a primary cash crop.^[218]

In the cities the colonial authorities decided to dispel tensions by raising urban wages, thereby strengthening the hand of moderate union organisations like the KFRTU. By 1956, the British had granted direct election of native Kenyan members of the Legislative Assembly, followed shortly thereafter by an increase in the number of local seats to fourteen. A Parliamentary conference in January 1960 indicated that the British would accept "one person—one vote" majority rule.

Deaths

The number of deaths attributable to the Emergency is disputed. David Anderson estimates 25,000^[18] people died; British demographer John Blacker's estimate is 50,000 deaths—half of them children aged ten or below. He attributes this death toll mostly to increased malnutrition, starvation and disease from wartime conditions.^[210]

Caroline Elkins says "tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands" died.^[219] Elkins' numbers have been challenged by Blacker, who demonstrated in detail that her numbers were overestimated, explaining that Elkins' figure of 300,000 deaths "implies that perhaps half of the adult male population would have been wiped out—yet the censuses of 1962 and 1969 show no evidence of this—the age-sex pyramids for the Kikuyu districts do not even show indentations."^[210]

His study dealt directly with Elkins' claim that "somewhere between 130,000 and 300,000 Kikuyu are unaccounted for" at the 1962 census,^[220] and was read by both David Anderson and John Lonsdale prior to publication.^[5] David Elstein has noted that leading authorities on Africa have taken issue with parts of Elkins' study, in particular her mortality figures: "The senior British historian of Kenya, John Lonsdale, whom Elkins thanks profusely in her book as 'the most gifted scholar I know', warned her to place no reliance on anecdotal sources, and regards her statistical analysis—for which she cites him as one of three advisors—as 'frankly incredible'."^[5]

The British possibly killed more than 20,000 Mau Mau militants,^[6] but in some ways more notable is the smaller number of Mau Mau suspects dealt with by capital punishment: by the end of the Emergency, the total was 1,090. At no other time or place in the British Empire was capital punishment dispensed so aggressively—the total is more than double the number executed by the French in Algeria.^[221]

Officially 1,819 Native Kenyans were killed by the Mau Mau. David Anderson believes this to be an undercount and cites a higher figure of 5,000 killed by the Mau Mau.[5]^[223]

War crimes

Main article:

massacres, bombings of civilian targets, terrorism, mutilation, torture, and murder of detainees and prisoners of war. Additional common crimes include theft, arson, and the destruction of property not warranted by military necessity.^[224]

David Anderson says the rebellion was "a story of atrocity and excess on both sides, a dirty war from which no one emerged with much pride, and certainly no glory".[225] Political scientist Daniel Goldhagen describes the campaign against the Mau Mau as an example of eliminationism, though this verdict has been fiercely criticised.^[5]

British war crimes

We knew the slow method of torture [at the Mau Mau Investigation Center] was worse than anything we could do. Special Branch there had a way of slowly electrocuting a Kuke—they'd rough up one for days. Once I went personally to drop off one gang member who needed special treatment. I stayed for a few hours to help the boys out, softening him up. Things got a little out of hand. By the time I cut his balls off, he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket. Too bad, he died before we got much out of him.^[226]

One settler's description of British interrogation. The extent to which such accounts can be taken at face value has been questioned.^[227]

See also: British war crimes

The British authorities suspended

Hussein Onyango Obama, the grandfather of [U.S. President] Barack Obama. According to his widow, British soldiers forced pins into his fingernails and buttocks and squeezed his testicles between metal rods. Two of the original five claimants who brought the test case against the British were castrated.^[233]

The historian Robert Edgerton describes the methods used during the emergency: "If a question was not answered to the interrogator's satisfaction, the subject was beaten and kicked. If that did not lead to the desired confession, and it rarely did, more force was applied. Electric shock was widely used, and so was fire. Women were choked and held under water; gun barrels, beer bottles, and even knives were thrust into their vaginas. Men had beer bottles thrust up their rectums, were dragged behind Land Rovers, whipped, burned and bayoneted... Some police officers did not bother with more time-consuming forms of torture; they simply shot any suspect who refused to answer, then told the next suspect, to dig his own grave. When the grave was finished, the man was asked if he would now be willing to talk."[234]

[E]lectric shock was widely used, as well as cigarettes and fire. Bottles (often broken), gun barrels, knives, snakes, vermin, and hot eggs were thrust up men's rectums and women's vaginas. The screening teams whipped, shot, burned and mutilated Mau Mau suspects, ostensibly to gather intelligence for military operations and as court evidence.^[235]

—Caroline Elkins

In June 1957,

Governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, detailing the way the regime of abuse at the colony's detention camps was being subtly altered. He said that the mistreatment of the detainees is "distressingly reminiscent of conditions in Nazi Germany or Communist Russia". Despite this, he said that in order for abuse to remain legal, Mau Mau suspects must be beaten mainly on their upper body, "vulnerable parts of the body should not be struck, particularly the spleen, liver or kidneys", and it was important that "those who administer violence ... should remain collected, balanced and dispassionate"; he also reminded the governor that "If we are going to sin", he wrote, "we must sin quietly."^[233][236]

According to Author

Wangari Maathai, three out of every four Kikuyu men were in detention in 1954. Maathai states that detainees were made to do forced labor and that their land was taken from them and given to collaborators. Maathai further states that the Home Guard in particular, raped women and had a reputation for cruelty in the form of terror and intimidation, whereas the Mau Mau soldiers were initially respectful of women.^[237] Only a small handful of rape cases went to trial. Fifty-six British soldiers and colonial police officers were tried for rape, of which 17 were convicted. The harshest sentences imposed were six-year sentences imposed on three British soldiers convicted of gang-raping a woman.^[238]

Chuka massacre

The

cashiered from the Army.^[240] He served his sentence at Wormwood Scrubs Prison in London.^[241][242] None of the other ranks involved in the massacre has been prosecuted.^{[243][244][245]}

On 11 March 1954, Griffiths was found guilty of murder and sentenced to five years' imprisonment; he was cashiered from the Army and served his sentence in HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs in London.[246]^[241]

Hola massacre

The Hola massacre was an incident during the conflict in Kenya against British colonial rule at a colonial detention camp in Hola, Kenya. By January 1959, the camp had a population of 506 detainees, of whom 127 were held in a secluded "closed camp". This more remote camp near Garissa, eastern Kenya, was reserved for the most uncooperative of the detainees. They often refused, even when threats of force were made, to join in the colonial "rehabilitation process" or perform manual labour or obey colonial orders. The camp commandant outlined a plan that would force 88 of the detainees to bend to work. On 3 March 1959, the camp commandant put this plan into action—as a result, 11 detainees were clubbed to death by guards.^[247] 77 surviving detainees sustained serious permanent injuries.^[248] The British government accepts that the colonial administration tortured detainees, but denies liability.^[249]

Mau Mau war crimes

Mau Mau fighters, ... contrary to African customs and values, assaulted old people, women and children. The horrors they practiced included the following: decapitation and general mutilation of civilians, torture before murder, bodies bound up in sacks and dropped in wells, burning the victims alive, gouging out of eyes, splitting open the stomachs of pregnant women. No war can justify such gruesome actions. In man's inhumanity to man, there is no race distinction. The Africans were practicing it on themselves. There was no reason and no restraint on both sides.^[107]

—Bethwell Ogot

Lari massacres

Main article: Lari massacre

Mau Mau militants perpetrated numerous war crimes. One such incident was their attack on the settlement of Lari, on the night of 25–26 March 1953, in which they herded men, women and children into huts and set fire to them, hacking down with machetes anyone who attempted escape, before throwing them back into the burning huts.^[250] The attack at Lari was so extreme that "African policemen who saw the bodies of the victims ... were physically sick and said 'These people are animals. If I see one now I shall shoot with the greatest eagerness'",^[124] and it "even shocked many Mau Mau supporters, some of whom would subsequently try to excuse the attack as 'a mistake'". A total of 309 rebels would be prosecuted for the massacre, of which 136 were convicted. Seventy-one of those convicted were executed.^[251][252]

A retaliatory massacre was immediately perpetrated by Kenyan security forces who were partially overseen by British commanders. Official estimates place the death toll from the first Lari massacre at 74, and the retaliatory attack at 150, though neither of these figures account for persons who may have been 'disappeared'. Whatever the actual number of victims, "[t]he grim truth was that, for every person who died in Lari's first massacre, at least two more were killed in retaliation in the second."^[253]

Aside from the Lari massacres, Kikuyu were also tortured, mutilated and murdered by Mau Mau on many other occasions.^[107] Mau Mau were estimated to have killed 1,819 of their fellow native Kenyans, though again, this number may exclude those whose bodies were never found. Anderson estimates the true number to be around 5,000.^[223] Thirty-two European and twenty-six Asian civilians were also murdered by Mau Mau militants, with similar numbers wounded. The best known European victim was Michael Ruck, aged six, who was hacked to death with pangas along with his parents, Roger and Esme, and one of the Rucks' farm workers, Muthura Nagahu, who had tried to help the family.^[254] Newspapers in Kenya and abroad published graphic murder details, including images of young Michael with bloodied teddy bears and trains strewn on his bedroom floor.^[255]

In 1952, the poisonous latex of the African milk bush was used by members of Mau Mau to kill cattle in an incident of biological warfare.^[256]

Legacy

Although Mau Mau was effectively crushed by the end of 1956, it was not until the First Lancaster House Conference, in January 1960, that native Kenyan majority rule was established and the period of colonial transition to independence initiated.^[257] Before the conference, it was anticipated by both native Kenyan and European leaders that Kenya was set for a European-dominated multi-racial government.^[257]

There is continuing debate about Mau Mau's and the rebellion's effects on decolonisation and on Kenya after independence. Regarding decolonisation, the most common view is that Kenya's independence came about as a result of the British government's deciding that a continuance of colonial rule would entail a greater use of force than that which the British public would tolerate.^[258] Nissimi argues, though, that such a view fails to "acknowledge the time that elapsed until the rebellion's influence actually took effect [and does not] explain why the same liberal tendencies failed to stop the dirty war the British conducted against the Mau Mau in Kenya while it was raging on". Others contend that, as the 1950s progressed, nationalist intransigence increasingly rendered official plans for political development irrelevant, meaning that after the mid-1950s British policy increasingly accepted Kenyan nationalism and moved to co-opt its leaders and organisations into collaboration.^[140][259]

It has been argued that the conflict helped set the stage for Kenyan independence in December 1963,^[260] or at least secured the prospect of Black-majority rule once the British left.^[261] However, this is disputed and other sources downplay the contribution of Mau Mau to decolonisation.^[262]

On 12 December 1964,

Daily Nation saying: "They are now outlaws, who will be pursued and brought to punishment. They must be outlawed as well in the minds of all the people of Kenya."^[263][264]

On 12 September 2015, the British government unveiled a Mau Mau memorial statue in Nairobi's Uhuru Park that it had funded "as a symbol of reconciliation between the British government, the Mau Mau, and all those who suffered". This followed a June 2013 decision by Britain to compensate more than 5,000 Kenyans it had tortured and abused during the Mau Mau insurgency.[265]

Compensation claims

In 1999, a collection of former fighters calling themselves the Mau Mau Original Group announced that they would attempt a £5 billion claim against the UK on behalf of hundreds of thousands of Kenyans for ill-treatment that they said they had suffered during the rebellion, though nothing came of it.^[266][267] In November 2002, the Mau Mau Trust—a welfare group for former members of the movement—announced that it would attempt to sue the British government for widespread human rights violations it said had been committed against its members.^[268] Until September 2003, the Mau Mau movement was banned.^[269][270]

Once the ban was removed, former Mau Mau members who had been castrated or otherwise tortured were supported by the Kenya Human Rights Commission, in particular by the commission's George Morara, in their attempt to take on the British government;^[271][272] their lawyers had amassed 6,000 depositions regarding human rights abuses by late 2002.^[273] 42 potential claimants were interviewed, from whom five were chosen to prosecute a test case; one of the five, Susan Ciong'ombe Ngondi, has since died.^[272] The remaining four test claimants are: Ndiku Mutua, who was castrated; Paulo Muoka Nzili, who was castrated; Jane Muthoni Mara, who was subjected to sexual assault that included having bottles filled with boiling water pushed up her vagina; and Wambugu Wa Nyingi, who survived the Hola massacre.^{[274][275][276]}

Ben Macintyre of The Times said of the legal case: "Opponents of these proceedings have pointed out, rightly, that the Mau Mau was a brutal terrorist force, guilty of the most dreadful atrocities. Yet only one of the claimants is of that stamp—Mr Nzili. He has admitted taking the Mau Mau oath and said that all he did was to ferry food to the fighters in the forest. None has been accused, let alone convicted, of any crime."^[277]

Upon publication of Caroline Elkins' Imperial Reckoning in 2005, Kenya called for an apology from the UK for atrocities committed during the 1950s.^[278] The British government claimed that the issue was the responsibility of the Kenyan government, on the ground of "state succession" for former colonies, relying on an obscure legal precedent relating to Patagonian toothfish^[279] and the declaration of martial law in Jamaica in 1860.^[280]

In July 2011, "George Morara strode down the corridor and into a crowded little room [in Nairobi] where 30 elderly Kenyans sat hunched together around a table clutching cups of hot tea and sharing plates of biscuits. 'I have good news from London', he announced. 'We have won the first part of the battle!' At once, the room erupted in cheers."^[276] The good news was that a British judge had ruled that the Kenyans could sue the British government for their torture.^[281] Morara said that, if the first test cases succeeded, perhaps 30,000 others would file similar complaints of torture.^[276] Explaining his decision, Mr Justice McCombe said the claimants had an "arguable case",^[282] and added:

It may well be thought strange, or perhaps even dishonourable, that a legal system which will not in any circumstances admit into its proceedings evidence obtained by torture should yet refuse to entertain a claim against the Government in its own jurisdiction for that Government's allegedly negligent failure to prevent torture which it had the means to prevent. Furthermore, resort to technicality ... to rule such a claim out of court appears particularly misplaced.^[283]

A Times editorial noted with satisfaction that "Mr Justice McCombe told the FCO, in effect, to get lost. ... Though the arguments against reopening very old wounds are seductive, they fail morally. There are living claimants and it most certainly was not their fault that the documentary evidence that seems to support their claims was for so long 'lost' in the governmental filing system."^[284]

If we are going to sin, we must sin quietly.^[285]

—Kenyan Attorney-General Eric Griffith-Jones

During the course of the Mau Mau legal battle in London, a large amount of what was stated to be formerly lost Foreign Office archival material was finally brought to light, while yet more was discovered to be missing.

migrated archives, provided details of British human rights abuses (torture, rape, execution)^[287]

in its former colonies during the final stages of empire, including during Mau Mau, and even after decolonisation.

Regarding the Mau Mau Uprising, the records included confirmation of "the extent of the violence inflicted on suspected Mau Mau rebels"[288] in British detention camps documented in Caroline Elkins' study.^[289] Numerous allegations of murder and rape by British military personnel are recorded in the files, including an incident where a native Kenyan baby was "burnt to death", the "defilement of a young girl", and a soldier in Royal Irish Fusiliers who killed "in cold blood two people who had been his captives for over 12 hours".^[290] Baring himself was aware of the "extreme brutality" of the sometimes lethal torture meted out—which included "most drastic" beatings, solitary confinement, starvation, castration, whipping, burning, rape, sodomy, and forceful insertion of objects into orifices—but took no action.^[173][288] Baring's inaction was despite the urging of people like Arthur Young, Commissioner of Police for Kenya for less than eight months of 1954 before he resigned in protest, that "the horror of some of the [camps] should be investigated without delay".^[177] In February 1956, a provincial commissioner in Kenya, "Monkey" Johnson, wrote to Attorney General Reginald Manningham-Buller urging him to block any enquiry into the methods used against Mau Mau: "It would now appear that each and every one of us, from the Governor downwards, may be in danger of removal from public service by a commission of enquiry as a result of enquiries made by the CID."^[291] The April 2012 release also included detailed accounts of the policy of seizing livestock from Kenyans suspected of supporting Mau Mau rebels.^[292]

Main criticism we shall have to meet is that 'Cowan plan'^[293] which was approved by Government contained instructions which in effect authorised unlawful use of violence against detainees.^[294]

Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd

Commenting on the papers, David Anderson stated that the "documents were hidden away to protect the guilty",^[295] and "that the extent of abuse now being revealed is truly disturbing".^[296] "Everything that could happen did happen. Allegations about beatings and violence were widespread. Basically you could get away with murder. It was systematic", Anderson said.^[101][297] An example of this impunity is the case of eight colonial officials accused of having prisoners tortured to death going unpunished even after their actions were reported to London.^[291] Huw Bennett of King's College London, who had worked with Anderson on the Chuka Massacre, said in a witness statement to the court that the new documents "considerably strengthen" the knowledge that the British Army were "intimately involved" with the colonial security forces, whom they knew were "systematically abusing and torturing detainees in screening centres and detention camps".^[290] In April 2011, lawyers for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office continued to maintain that there was no such policy.^[290] As early as November 1952, however, military reports noted that "[t]he Army has been used for carrying out certain functions that properly belonged to the Police, eg. searching of huts and screening of Africans", and British soldiers arrested and transferred Mau Mau suspects to camps where they were beaten and tortured until they confessed. Bennett said that "the British Army retained ultimate operational control over all security forces throughout the Emergency", and that its military intelligence operation worked "hand in glove" with the Kenyan Special Branch "including in screening and interrogations in centres and detention camps".^[290]

The Kenyan government sent a letter to the

Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, William Hague, insisting that the UK government was legally liable for the atrocities.^[295] The Foreign Office, however, reaffirmed its position that it was not, in fact, liable for colonial atrocities,^[295] and argued that the documents had not "disappeared" as part of a cover-up.^[298] Nearly ten years before, in late 2002, as the BBC aired a documentary detailing British human rights abuses committed during the rebellion and 6,000 depositions had been taken for the legal case, former district colonial officer John Nottingham had expressed concern that compensation be paid soon, since most victims were in their 80s and would soon die. He told the BBC: "What went on in the Kenya camps and villages was brutal, savage torture. It is time that the mockery of justice that was perpetrated in this country at that time, should be, must be righted. I feel ashamed to have come from a Britain that did what it did here [in Kenya]."^[299]

Thirteen boxes of "top secret" Kenya files are still missing.[300]^[301]

In October 2012, Mr Justice McCombe granted the surviving elderly test claimants the right to sue the UK for damages.^[302][303] The UK government then opted for what the claimants' lawyers called the "morally repugnant" decision to appeal McCombe's ruling.^[304] In May 2013, it was reported that the appeal was on hold while the UK government held compensation negotiations with the claimants.^[305][306]

Settlement

On 6 June 2013, the foreign secretary, William Hague, told parliament that the UK government had reached a settlement with the claimants. He said it included "payment of a settlement sum in respect of 5,228 claimants, as well as a gross costs sum, to the total value of £19.9 million. The Government will also support the construction of a memorial in Nairobi to the victims of torture and ill-treatment during the colonial era."^[307][308] However he added, "We continue to deny liability on behalf of the Government and British taxpayers today for the actions of the colonial administration in respect of the claims".^[307]

Mau Mau status in Kenya

Partisan questions about the Mau Mau war have ... echoed round Kenya's political arena during 40 years of independence. How historically necessary was Mau Mau? Did its secretive violence alone have the power to destroy white supremacy? Or did it merely sow discord within a mass nationalism that—for all the failings of the Kenya African Union (KAU)—was bound to win power in the end? Did Mau Mau aim at freedom for all Kenyans? or did moderate, constitutional politicians rescue that pluralist prize from the jaws of its ethnic chauvinism? Has the self-sacrificial victory of the poor been unjustly forgotten, and appropriated by the rich? or are Mau Mau's defeats and divisions best buried in oblivion?^[309]

—John Lonsdale

It is often argued that the Mau Mau Uprising was suppressed as a subject for public discussion in Kenya during the periods under Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi because of the key positions and influential presence of some loyalists in government, business and other elite sectors of Kenyan society post-1963.^[310][311] Unsurprisingly, during this same period opposition groups tactically embraced the Mau Mau rebellion.^[16]

Members of Mau Mau are currently recognised by the Kenyan Government as freedom-independence heroes and heroines who sacrificed their lives in order to free Kenyans from colonial rule.^[312] Since 2010, Mashujaa Day (Heroes Day) has been marked annually on 20 October (the same day Baring signed the Emergency order).^[313] According to the Kenyan Government, Mashujaa Day will be a time for Kenyans to remember and honour Mau Mau and other Kenyans who participated in the independence struggle.^[312] Mashujaa Day will replace Kenyatta Day; the latter has until now also been held on 20 October.^[314] In 2001, the Kenyan Government announced that important Mau Mau sites were to be turned into national monuments.^[315]

This official celebration of Mau Mau is in marked contrast to post-colonial Kenyan governments' rejection of the Mau Mau as an engine of national liberation.^[114][316] Such a turnabout has attracted criticism of government manipulation of the Mau Mau uprising for political ends.^[315][317]

We are determined to have independence in peace, and we shall not allow hooligans to rule Kenya. We must have no hatred towards one another. Mau Mau was a disease which had been eradicated, and must never be remembered again.^[143]

—Speech by Jomo Kenyatta, April 1963

See also

• The Black Man's Land Trilogy, series of films on Kenya
• Frank Kitson, author of Gangs and Counter-gangs
• Kurito ole Kisio
• Muthoni wa Kirima
• Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers
• Robert Ruark, author of Something of Value and Uhuru
• Weep Not, Child

Insurgency

• Mungiki, contemporary Kikuyu insurgency within Kenya

General

• British military history
• History of Kenya

Notes

1. ^ The name Kenya Land and Freedom Army is sometimes heard in connection with Mau Mau. KLFA was the name that Dedan Kimathi used for a coordinating body which he tried to set up for Mau Mau. It was also the name of another militant group that sprang up briefly in the spring of 1960; the group was broken up during a brief operation from 26 March to 30 April.^[1]
2. exonym is "Gĩkũyũ", derived from the Swahili language
   .
3. ^ Though finalised in 1926, reserves were first instituted by the Crown Lands Ordinance of 1915.^[49]
4. ^ "Squatter or resident labourers are those who reside with their families on European farms usually for the purpose of work for the owners. ... Contract labourers are those who sign a contract of service before a magistrate, for periods varying from three to twelve months. Casual labourers leave their reserves to engage themselves to European employers for any period from one day upwards."^[52] In return for his services, a squatter was entitled to use some of the settler's land for cultivation and grazing.^[57] Contract and casual workers are together referred to as migratory labourers, in distinction to the permanent presence of the squatters on farms. The phenomenon of squatters arose in response to the complementary difficulties of Europeans in finding labourers and of Africans in gaining access to arable and grazing land.^[42]
5. ^ During the Emergency, screening was the term used by colonial authorities to mean the interrogation of a Mau Mau suspect. The alleged member or sympathiser of Mau Mau would be interrogated in order to obtain an admission of guilt—specifically, a confession that they had taken the Mau Mau oath—as well as for intelligence.^[155]
6. ^ The term gulag is used by David Anderson and Caroline Elkins. For Anderson, see his 2005 Histories of the Hanged, p. 7: "Virtually every one of the acquitted men ... would spend the next several years in the notorious detention camps of the Kenyan gulag"; for Elkins, see the UK edition of her 2005 book, Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya.
7. ^ Other estimates are as high as 450,000 interned.^{[citation needed]}

References

Notes

1. ^ Nissimi 2006, p. 11.
2. ^ Page 2011, p. 206.
3. ^ ^{a b} Anderson 2005, p. 5.
4. ^ Durrani, Shiraz. Mau Mau, the Revolutionary, Anti-Imperialist Force from Kenya, 1948–63: Selection from Shiraz Durrani's Kenya's War of Independence: Mau Mau and Its Legacy of Resistance to Colonialism and Imperialism, 1948–1990. Vita Books, 2018.
5. ^ ^{a b c d e} David Elstein (7 April 2011). "Daniel Goldhagen and Kenya: recycling fantasy". openDemocracy.org. Archived from the original on 15 December 2018. Retrieved 8 March 2012.
6. ^ ^{a b c} Anderson 2005, p. 4.
7. ISBN 978-1-134-04246-3
   .
8. JSTOR 25741397
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9. ^ Anderson 2005.
10. ^ The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Army (1994) p. 350
11. ISSN 0040-781X. Archived
    from the original on 23 April 2020. Retrieved 12 February 2018.
12. ^ The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Army (1994) p. 346.
13. ^ Mumford 2012, p. 49.
14. ^ Füredi 1989, p. 5
15. ^ Maloba 1998.
16. ^ ^{a b c} Branch 2009, p. xii.
17. ^ Gerlach 2010, p. 213.
18. ^ ^{a b c} "Bloody uprising of the Mau Mau". BBC News. 7 April 2011. Archived from the original on 2 January 2020. Retrieved 23 July 2019.
19. ^ Kanogo 1992, pp. 23–25.
20. ^ Majdalany 1963, p. 75.
21. ^ ^{a b} Kariuki 1975, p. 167.
22. ^ Kariuki 1975, p. 24.
23. ISBN 0307263487
    .
24. ^ ^{a b} Curtis 2003, p. 320.
25. ^ ^{a b} Coray 1978, p. 179: "The [colonial] administration's refusal to develop mechanisms whereby African grievances against non-Africans might be resolved on terms of equity, moreover, served to accelerate a growing disaffection with colonial rule. The investigations of the Kenya Land Commission of 1932–1934 are a case study in such lack of foresight, for the findings and recommendations of this commission, particularly those regarding the claims of the Kikuyu of Kiambu, would serve to exacerbate other grievances and nurture the seeds of a growing African nationalism in Kenya".
26. ^ Anderson 2005, pp. 15, 22.
27. ^ Ormsby-Gore, et al. 1925, p. 149.
28. ^ Alam 2007, p. 1: The colonial presence in Kenya, in contrast to, say, India, where it lasted almost 200 years, was brief but equally violent. It formally started when Her Majesty's agent and Counsel General at Zanzibar, A.H. Hardinge, in a proclamation on 1 July 1895, announced that he was taking over the Coastal areas as well as the interior that included the Kikuyu land, now known as Central Province."
29. ^ Ellis 1986, p. 100.
    You can read Dilke's speech in full here: "Class V; House of Commons Debate, 1 June 1894". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Series 4, Vol. 25, cc. 181–270. 1 June 1894. Archived from the original on 15 December 2018. Retrieved 11 April 2013.
30. ^ Edgerton 1989, p. 4. Francis Hall, an officer in the Imperial British East Africa Company and after whom Fort Hall was named, asserted: "There is only one way to improve the Wakikuyu [and] that is wipe them out; I should be only too delighted to do so, but we have to depend on them for food supplies."
31. ^ Meinertzhagen 1957, pp. 51–52 Richard Meinertzhagen wrote of how, on occasion, they massacred Kikuyu by the hundreds.
32. ^ Alam 2007, p. 2.
33. ^ Brantley 1981.
34. ^ Atieno-Odhiambo 1995, p. 25.
35. ^ Ogot 2003, p. 15.
36. ^ Leys 1973, p. 342, which notes they were "always hopeless failures. Naked spearmen fall in swathes before machine-guns, without inflicting a single casualty in return. Meanwhile, the troops burn all the huts and collect all the live stock within reach. Resistance once at an end, the leaders of the rebellion are surrendered for imprisonment ... Risings that followed such a course could hardly be repeated. A period of calm followed. And when unrest again appeared it was with other leaders ... and other motives." A particularly interesting example, albeit outside Kenya and featuring guns instead of spears, of successful armed resistance to maintain crucial aspects of autonomy is the Basuto Gun War of 1880–1881, whose ultimate legacy remains tangible even today, in the form of Lesotho.
37. ^ Maxon 1989, p. 44.
38. ^ ^{a b c} Ormsby-Gore, et al. 1925, p. 187.
39. ^ Mosley 1983, p. 5.
40. ^ Anderson 2005, p. 3.
41. ^ Edgerton 1989, pp. 1–5.
    Elkins 2005, p. 2, notes that the (British taxpayer) loans were never repaid on the Uganda Railway; they were written off in the 1930s.
42. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Kanogo 1993, p. 8.
43. ^ ^{a b c d e} Anderson 2005, p. 10.
44. ^ Carter 1934.
45. ^ Shilaro 2002, p. 123.
46. ^ Ormsby-Gore, et al. 1925, p. 159.
47. ^ Edgerton 1989, p. 5.
48. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Kanogo 1993, p. 9.
49. ^ ^{a b} Ormsby-Gore, et al. 1925, p. 29: "This judgment is now widely known to Africans in Kenya, and it has become clear to them that, without their being previously informed or consulted, their rights in their tribal land, whether communal or individual, have 'disappeared' in law and have been superseded by the rights of the Crown."
50. ^ Emerson Welch 1980, p. 16.
51. ^ Anderson 2004, p. 498. "The recruitment of African labor at poor rates of pay and under primitive conditions of work was characteristic of the operation of colonial capitalism in Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. ... [C]olonial states readily colluded with capital in providing the legal framework necessary for the recruitment and maintenance of labor in adequate numbers and at low cost to the employer. ... The colonial state shared the desire of the European settler to encourage Africans into the labour market, whilst also sharing a concern to moderate the wages paid to workers".
52. ^ ^{a b} Ormsby-Gore, et al. 1925, p. 173: "Casual labourers leave their reserves ... to earn the wherewithal to pay their 'Hut Tax' and to get money to purchase trade goods."
53. ^ Shilaro 2002, p. 117: "African reserves in Kenya were legally constituted in the Crown Lands Amendment Ordinance of 1926".
54. ^ Anderson 2004, pp. 506.
55. ^ Kanogo 1993, p. 13.
56. ^ Anderson 2004, pp. 505.
57. ^ Kanogo 1993, p. 10.
58. ^ Creech Jones, Arthur (10 November 1937). "Native Labour; House of Commons Debate, 10 November 1937". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Series 5, Vol. 328, cc. 1757-9. Archived from the original on 15 December 2018. Retrieved 13 April 2013.
59. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 17.
60. ^ Anderson 2004, p. 508.
61. ^ Kanogo 1993, pp. 96–97.
62. ^ Anderson 2004, p. 507.
63. ^ Ormsby-Gore, et al. 1925, p. 166: "In many parts of the territory we were informed that the majority of farmers were having the utmost difficulty in obtaining labour to cultivate and to harvest their crops".
64. ^ "History". kenyaembassydc.org. Archived from the original on 22 May 2019. Retrieved 13 May 2019.
65. ^ Ormsby-Gore, et al. 1925, pp. 155–156.
66. ^ Ormsby-Gore, et al. 1925, p. 180: "The population of the district to which one medical officer is allotted amounts more often than not to over a quarter of a million natives distributed over a large area. ... [T]here are large areas in which no medical work is being undertaken."
67. ^ Swainson 1980, p. 23.
68. ^ Anderson 2004, pp. 516–528.
69. ^ Curtis 2003, pp. 320–321.
70. ISBN 978-0-333-17671-9
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71. ^ ^{a b} Ogot 2003, p. 16.
72. ^ Anderson 2005, p. 282.
73. ISBN 0307263487
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74. ^ Berman 1991, p. 198.
75. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 25.
76. ^ Branch 2007, p. 1.
77. ^ ^{a b c} Elkins 2005, p. 32.
78. ^ Edgerton 1989, p. 65.
79. ^ Füredi 1989, p. 116.
80. ^ Edgerton 1989, pp. 66–67.
81. ^ Anderson 2005, p. 252.
82. ^ Anderson 2005, p. 239.
83. OCLC 988759275
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84. ^ "Mau Mau reed shafted arrows with some barbed 'wire' iron arrow heads and bound nocks, Kenya, 1953". National Army Museum. Archived from the original on 16 July 2023. Retrieved 16 July 2023.
85. ^ Stoddard, James (2020). Mau Mau Blasters: The Homemade Guns of the Mau Mau Uprising (MA). University of Central Florida. Archived from the original on 12 November 2022.
86. ^ "When the Mau Mau Used a Biological Weapon". Owaahh. 30 October 2014. Archived from the original on 10 April 2023. Retrieved 12 February 2018.
87. ^
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89. ^ Presley, Cora Ann (1992). Kikuyu Women, the Mau Mau Rebellion and Social Change in Kenya. Boulder: Westview Press.
90. ^ Füredi 1989, p. 4.
91. ^ Berman 1991, pp. 182–183.
92. ^ Mahone 2006, p. 241: "This article opens with a retelling of colonial accounts of the 'mania of 1911', which took place in the Kamba region of Kenya Colony. The story of this 'psychic epidemic' and others like it were recounted over the years as evidence depicting the predisposition of Africans to episodic mass hysteria."
93. ^ McCulloch 2006, pp. 64–76.
94. PMID 20273401. Archived
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95. ^ Füredi 1994, pp. 119–121.
96. ^ Berman 1991, pp. 183–185.
97. ^ Clough 1998, p. 4.
98. ^ ^{a b} Branch 2009, p. 3.
99. ^ Anderson 2005, p. 4: "Much of the struggle tore through the African communities themselves, an internecine war waged between rebels and so-called 'loyalists' – Africans who took the side of the government and opposed Mau Mau."
100. ^ John Reader, Africa: A Biography of the Continent (1997), p. 641.
101. ^ ^{a b} "Mau Mau uprising: Bloody history of Kenya conflict". BBC News. 7 April 2011. Archived from the original on 10 April 2011. Retrieved 12 May 2011. There was lots of suffering on the other side too. This was a dirty war. It became a civil war—though that idea remains extremely unpopular in Kenya today. (The quote is of Professor David Anderson)
102. JSTOR 40402312
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103. ^ Füredi 1989, pp. 4–5: "Since they were the most affected by the colonial system and the most educated about its ways, the Kikuyu emerged as the most politicized African community in Kenya."
104. ^ Berman 1991, p. 196: "The impact of colonial capitalism and the colonial state hit the Kikuyu with greater force and effect than any other of Kenya's peoples, setting off new processes of differentiation and class formation."
105. ^ Thomas, Beth (1993). "Historian, Kenya native's book on Mau Mau revolt". UpDate. 13 (13): 7. Archived from the original on 25 February 2021. Retrieved 28 May 2010.
106. ^ "Pulitzer Prize Winners: General Non-Fiction". pulitzer.org. Archived from the original on 24 February 2008. Retrieved 16 March 2008.
107. ^ ^{a b c} Ogot 2005, p. 502: "There was no reason and no restraint on both sides, although Elkins sees no atrocities on the part of Mau Mau."
108. ^ See in particular David Elstein's angry letters:
     • "Letters: Tell me where I'm wrong". London Review of Books. 27 (11). 2005. Archived from the original on 3 October 2019. Retrieved 3 May 2011.
     • "The End of the Mau Mau". The New York Review of Books. 52 (11). 2005. Archived from the original on 27 September 2015. Retrieved 3 May 2011.
     • "Letters: Tell me where I'm wrong". London Review of Books. 27 (14). 2005. Archived from the original on 5 July 2017. Retrieved 3 May 2011.
109. ^ See Elstein's "Daniel Goldhagen and Kenya: recycling fantasy" Archived 15 December 2018 at the Wayback Machine and Anderson 2005, p. 294.
110. ^ Pirouet 1977, p. 197.
111. ^ ^{a b} Clough 1998.
112. ^ Berman 1991, p. 197: "[D]eveloping conflicts ... in Kikuyu society were expressed in a vigorous internal debate."
113. ^ Anderson 2005, pp. 11–12.
114. ^ ^{a b} Branch 2009, p. xi.
115. ^ Berman 1991, p. 199.
116. ^ Branch 2009, p. 1.
117. ^ Branch 2009, p. 2.
118. ^ Pirouet 1977, p. 200.
119. ^ Kalyvas 2006.
120. ^ Edgerton 1989, pp. 31–32.
121. ^ ^{a b c} Nissimi 2006, p. 4.
122. ^ French 2011, p. 29.
123. ^ "Mau Mau case: UK government accepts abuse took place". BBC News. 17 July 2012. Archived from the original on 11 August 2018. Retrieved 20 June 2018.
124. ^ ^{a b c} French 2011, p. 72.
125. ^ ^{a b} French 2011, p. 55.
126. ^ "Ciokaraine: The Story of the Female Meru Diviner". Google Arts & Culture. Archived from the original on 13 August 2020. Retrieved 8 August 2020.
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128. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 75: "According to Emergency regulations, the governor could issue Native Land Rights Confiscation Orders, whereby '[e]ach of the persons named in the schedule ... participated or aided in violent resistance against the forces of law and order' and therefore had his land confiscated".
129. ^ Wallis, Holly (18 April 2012). "British colonial files released following legal challenge". BBC News. Archived from the original on 14 June 2012. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
130. ^ ^{a b} Anderson 2005, p. 62.
131. ^ Elkins 2005, pp. 35–36.
132. ^ ^{a b} Anderson 2005, p. 63.
133. ^ Anderson 2005, p. 68.
134. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 38.
135. ^ Anderson 2005, p. 69.
136. ^ Anderson 2005, pp. 62–63.
137. ^ Andrew 2009, pp. 456–457.
     See also: Walton 2013, pp. 236–286.
138. ^ Andrew 2009, p. 454. See also the relevant footnote, n.96 of p. 454.
139. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 39.
140. ^ ^{a b} Berman 1991, p. 189.
141. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 37.
142. ^ Elkins 2005, pp. 37–38.
143. ^ ^{a b} Clough 1998, p. 25.
144. ^ ^{a b} French 2011, p. 116.
145. ^ Edgerton 1989, p. 83.
146. ^ "They Follow the Dug-Out General". Sunday Mail. Brisbane. 19 April 1953. p. 15. Retrieved 17 November 2013 – via National Library of Australia.
147. The Sunday Herald. Sydney. 30 August 1953. p. 8. Archived
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148. ^ "PSYOP of the Mau-Mau UprisingSGM" Archived 26 April 2020 at the Wayback Machine Herbert A. Friedman (Ret.) 4 January 2006, accessed 9 November 2013
149. ^ "Mau Mau General Surrenders". The Sydney Morning Herald. 9 March 1954. p. 3. Archived from the original on 9 April 2024. Retrieved 9 November 2013 – via National Library of Australia.
150. ^ French 2011, p. 32.
151. ^ French 2011, pp. 116–7.
152. ISBN 978-1-78096-903-9. Archived
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153. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 124: "There was an unusual consensus in the ranks of both the military and Baring's civilian government that the colony's capital was the nerve center for Mau Mau operations. Nearly three-quarters of the city's African male population of sixty thousand were Kikuyu, and most of these men, along with some twenty thousand Kikuyu women and children accompanying them, were allegedly 'active or passive supporters of Mau Mau'."
154. ^ Henderson & Goodhart 1958, p. 14: "In the first months of the emergency the Mau Mau discipline was so strong that a terrorist in the forest who gave his money to a courier could be almost certain of getting what he wanted from any shop in Nairobi."
155. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 63.
156. ^ Elkins 2005, pp. 121–125.
157. ^ ^{a b c d} Chappell 2011.
158. ^ Chappell 2011, p. 68.
159. RAF
     dropped the amazing total of 50,000 tons of bombs on the forests and fired over 2 million rounds from machine guns during strafing runs. It is not known how many humans or animals were killed."
160. ^ Chappell 2011, p. 67.
161. ^ Smith, J. T. Mau Mau! A Case study in Colonial Air Power Air Enthusiast 64 July–August 1996 pp. 65–71
162. ^ Edgerton 1989, p. 86.
163. ^ Anderson 1988: "The Swynnerton Plan was among the most comprehensive of all the post-war colonial development programmes implemented in British Africa. Largely framed prior to the declaration of the State of Emergency in 1952, but not implemented until two years later, this development is central to the story of Kenya's decolonization".
164. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 127.
165. ^ Ogot 1995, p. 48.
166. ^ Anderson 1988.
167. ^ Elkins 2005, pp. 128–129.
168. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 125.
169. ^ Elkins 2005, pp. 62–90.
170. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 109.
171. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 108.
172. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 136.
173. ^ ^{a b} Editorial (11 April 2011). "Mau Mau abuse case: Time to say sorry". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 September 2013. Retrieved 14 April 2011.
174. ^ ^{a b c} Elkins 2005, pp. 154–191.
175. ^ Peterson 2008, pp. 75–76, 89, 91: "Some detainees, worried that the substance of their lives was draining away, thought their primary duty lay with their families. They therefore confessed to British officers, and sought an early release from detention. Other detainees refused to accept the British demand that they sully other people's reputations by naming those whom they knew to be involved in Mau Mau. This 'hard core' kept their mouths closed, and languished for years in detention. The battle behind the wire was not fought over detainees' loyalty to a Mau Mau movement. Detainees' intellectual and moral concerns were always close to home. ... British officials thought that those who confessed had broken their allegiance to Mau Mau. But what moved detainees to confess was not their broken loyalty to Mau Mau, but their devotion to their families. British officials played on this devotion to hasten a confession. ... The battle behind the wire was not fought between patriotic hard-core Mau Mau and weak-kneed, wavering, broken men who confessed. ... Both hard core and soft core had their families in mind."
176. ^ ^{a b} Elkins 2005, p. 178.
177. ^ ^{a b} Editorial (13 April 2011). "Taking on the Boss: The quiet whistleblowers on events in Kenya deserve praise". The Times. Archived from the original on 4 October 2012. Retrieved 13 April 2011.
178. ^ ^{a b c d e} Elkins 2005, pp. 179–191.
179. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 148. It is debatable whether Peter Kenyatta was sympathetic to Mau Mau in the first place and therefore whether he truly switched sides.
180. ^ Mike Thompson (7 April 2011). "Mau Mau blame 'goes right to the top'". Today. BBC. 00:40–00:54. Archived from the original on 10 April 2011. Retrieved 12 May 2011.
181. ^ Elkins 2005, pp. 176–177.
182. ^ Elkins 2005, pp. 171–177.
183. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 144.
184. ^ Elkins 2005, Chapter 5: The Birth of Britain's Gulag.
185. ^ Curtis 2003, pp. 316–333.
186. ^ Ian Cobain; Peter Walker (11 April 2011). "Secret memo gave guidelines on abuse of Mau Mau in 1950s". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 12 April 2011. Retrieved 13 April 2011. Baring informed Lennox-Boyd that eight European officers were facing accusations of a series of murders, beatings and shootings. They included: "One District Officer, murder by beating up and roasting alive of one African." Despite receiving such clear briefings, Lennox-Boyd repeatedly denied that the abuses were happening, and publicly denounced those colonial officials who came forward to complain.
187. ^ Peterson 2008, p. 84.
188. ^ ^{a b c} Elkins 2005, p. 262.
189. ^ Elkins 2005, pp. 151–2.
190. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 227.
191. ^ Curtis 2003, p. 327.
192. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 153.
193. ^ Elkins 2005, pp. 240–241.
194. ^ French 2011, pp. 116–137.
195. ^ McCulloch 2006, p. 70.
196. ^ Elkins 2005, pp. 234–235. See also n.3 of p. 235.
197. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 235. Anderson 2005, p. 294, gives a slightly lower figure (1,007,500) for the number of individuals affected.
198. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 240.
199. ^ ^{a b c} Anderson 2005, p. 294.
200. ^ Nissimi 2006, pp. 9–10.
201. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 239.
202. ^ Elkins 2005, pp. 236–237.
203. ^ French 2011, p. 120.
204. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 238.
205. ^ Anderson 2005, p. 293.
206. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 252.
207. ^ Elkins 2005, pp. 259–260.
208. ^ ^{a b c} Elkins 2005, p. 260.
209. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 263.
210. ^ ^{a b c} Blacker 2007.
211. ^ Elkins 2005, pp. 260–261.
212. ^ Elkins 2005, p. 263: "It is accepted policy that cases of pulmonary tuberculosis ... be returned to their reserve to avail themselves of the routine medical control and treatment within their areas". (The quote is of the colony's director of medical services).
213. ^ Elkins 2005, pp. 263–4: "The financial situation has now worsened. ... Schemes of medical help, however desirable and however high their medical priority, could not in [these] circumstances be approved". (The quote is of Baring).
214. ^ Elkins 2005a, p. ^{[page needed]}.
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256. ^ Carus, W. Seth (2002). Bioterrorism and Biocrimes: The Illicit Use of Biological Agents Since 1900 (Reprint of 1st ed.). Amsterdam: Fredonia Books. pp. 63–65. This episode is not mentioned in histories of the Mau Mau revolt, suggesting that such incidents were rare.
257. ^ ^{a b} Wasserman 1976, p. 1.
258. ^ Nissimi 2006, p. 2.
259. ^ Branch & Cheeseman 2006, p. 11: "The co-option of sympathetic African elites during the colonial twilight into the bureaucracy, the legislature and the private property-based economy meant that the allies of colonialism and representatives of transnational capital were able to reap the benefits of independence. . . . The post-colonial state must therefore be seen as a representation of the interests protected and promoted during the latter years of colonial rule. Under Jomo Kenyatta, the post-colonial state represented a 'pact-of-domination' between transnational capital, the elite and the executive."
260. ^ Percox 2005, p. 752.
261. ^ Lonsdale 2000, pp. 109–110. "Mau Mau, despite its problematic claims to be called 'nationalist' . . . forced the issue of power in a way that KAU had never done. It was not that Mau Mau won its war against the British; guerrilla movements rarely win in military terms; and militarily Mau Mau was defeated. But in order to crown peace with sustainable civil governance—and thus reopen a prospect of controlled decolonization—the British had to abandon 'multiracialism' and adopt African rule as their vision of Kenya's future. . . . The blood of Mau Mau, no matter how peculiarly ethnic in source and aim, was the seed of Kenya's all-African sovereignty."
262. ^ Wasserman 1976, p. 1: "Although the rise of nationalist movements in Africa was certainly a contributing factor in the dismantling of the colonial empires, one cannot wholly attribute the 'demise of colonialism' to the rise of nationalism. ... [T]he decolonization process was shaped by an adaptive reaction of colonial political and economic interests to the political ascendency of a nationalist elite and to the threat of disruption by the masses."
263. S2CID 148635405
     .
264. ^ Kenya National Assembly Official Record. 12 July 2000. Parliamentary debates. pages 1552-1553
265. ^ "British-backed Mau Mau memorial set to open in rare colonial apology". The Economic Times. AFP. 11 September 2015. Archived from the original on 4 January 2017. Retrieved 26 September 2016.
266. ^ "Former guerrillas seek damages". The Irish Times. 8 August 1999. Retrieved 30 May 2012.
267. ^ "Mau Mau compensation demand". BBC News. 20 August 1999. Archived from the original on 15 April 2004. Retrieved 30 May 2012.
268. ^ Thompson, Mike (9 November 2002). "Mau Mau rebels threaten court action". BBC News. Archived from the original on 23 April 2006. Retrieved 30 May 2012.
269. ^ Plaut, Martin (31 August 2003). "Kenya lifts ban on Mau Mau". BBC News. Archived from the original on 14 March 2007. Retrieved 30 May 2012.
270. ^ Mike Pflanz (11 October 2006). "Mau Mau veterans issue writ deadline". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 11 January 2022. Retrieved 11 February 2012.
271. ^ Mitchell, Andrew (26 September 2006). "Mau Mau veterans to sue over British 'atrocities'". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 12 May 2022. Retrieved 12 April 2011.
272. ^
     Harvard Gazette. Archived
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273. ^ McGhie, John (9 November 2002). "Kenya: White Terror". BBC. Archived from the original on 6 February 2008. Retrieved 26 May 2012.
274. ^ "'He came with pliers'—Kenyan alleges torture by British colonial authorities". BBC News. 7 April 2011. Archived from the original on 16 July 2012. Retrieved 30 May 2012.
275. ^ "Mau Mau case: UK government cannot be held liable". BBC News. 7 April 2011. Archived from the original on 27 April 2012. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
276. ^ ^{a b c} McConnell, Tristan (21 July 2011). "Kenyan veterans celebrate first victory in compensation claim". The Times. Archived from the original on 18 March 2015. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
277. ^ Macintyre, Ben (8 April 2011). "In court to face the ghosts of the past". The Times. Archived from the original on 17 March 2015. Retrieved 30 May 2012.
278. ^ "UK 'atrocity' apology". BBC News. 4 March 2005. Archived from the original on 16 June 2006. Retrieved 30 May 2012.
279. ^ Owen Bowcott (5 April 2011). "Kenyans sue UK for alleged colonial human rights abuses". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 September 2013. Retrieved 11 February 2012.
280. ^ Owen Bowcott (7 April 2011). "Mau Mau victims seek compensation from UK for alleged torture". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 September 2013. Retrieved 11 February 2012.
281. ^ Owen Bowcott (21 July 2011). "Mau Mau torture claim Kenyans win right to sue British government". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 September 2013. Retrieved 21 July 2011.
282. ^ Dominic Casciani (21 July 2011). "Mau Mau Kenyans allowed to sue UK government". BBC News. Archived from the original on 21 July 2011. Retrieved 21 July 2011.
283. ^ Macintyre, Ben; Ralph, Alex; McConnell, Tristan (21 July 2011). "Kenyans can sue over 'colonial torture'". The Times. Archived from the original on 18 March 2015. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
284. ^ Editorial (22 July 2011). "Good News from London". The Times. Archived from the original on 18 March 2015. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
285. ^ Ben Macintyre (12 April 2011). "Torture device No 1: the legal rubber stamp". The Times. Archived from the original on 4 October 2012. Retrieved 12 April 2011.
286. ^ Elkins 2011.
287. ^ "Kenyans were tortured during Mau Mau rebellion, High Court hears". The Daily Telegraph. London. 18 July 2012. Archived from the original on 11 January 2022. Retrieved 18 March 2013.
288. ^ ^{a b} Ben Macintyre; Billy Kenber (13 April 2011). "Brutal beatings and the 'roasting alive' of a suspect: what secret Mau Mau files reveal". The Times. Archived from the original on 4 October 2012. Retrieved 13 April 2011. Sir Evelyn Baring, the Governor of Kenya, in a telegram to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, reported allegations of extreme brutality made against eight European district officers. They included 'assault by beating up and burning of two Africans during screening [interrogation]' and one officer accused of 'murder by beating up and roasting alive of one African'. No action was taken against the accused.
289. ^ Caroline Elkins (14 April 2011). "My critics ignored evidence of torture in Mau Mau detention camps". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 September 2013. Retrieved 14 April 2011.
290. ^ ^{a b c d} Kenber, Billy (19 April 2011). "New documents show how Britain sanctioned Mau Mau torture". The Times. Archived from the original on 17 March 2015. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
291. ^ ^{a b} Andy McSmith (8 April 2011). "Cabinet 'hushed up' torture of Mau Mau rebels". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 12 May 2022. Retrieved 10 February 2012.
292. ^ Wallis, Holly (18 April 2012). "British colonial files released following legal challenge". BBC News. Archived from the original on 14 June 2012. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
293. ^ Question, House of Lords, London 12 May 1959 – 'Whether the Government will make available to this House the text of the Cowan plan' Archived 9 April 2024 at the Wayback Machine
294. ^ Dominic Casciani (12 April 2011). "British Mau Mau abuse papers revealed". BBC News. Archived from the original on 3 May 2011. Retrieved 12 May 2011.
295. ^ ^{a b c} Ben Macintyre (5 April 2011). "Tales of brutality and violence that could open the claims floodgate". The Times. Archived from the original on 4 October 2012. Retrieved 6 April 2011. A letter was sent to William Hague on March 31 stating: 'The Republic of Kenya fully supports the claimants' case and has publicly denied any notion that responsibility for any acts and atrocities committed by the British colonial administration during the Kenya 'Emergency' was inherited by the Republic of Kenya.'
296. ^ David Anderson (25 July 2011). "It's not just Kenya. Squaring up to the seamier side of empire is long overdue". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 September 2013. Retrieved 27 July 2011.
297. ^ For more on Anderson's reaction to the 'missing' papers, see:
     • "Colonial secret papers to be made public". BBC News. 6 May 2011. Archived from the original on 9 May 2011. Retrieved 12 May 2011.
     • Mark Thompson (7 April 2011). "Mau Mau blame 'goes right to the top'". Today. BBC. 02:38–03:31. Archived from the original on 10 April 2011. Retrieved 12 May 2011. These new documents were withheld because they were considered to be particularly sensitive, so we can but imagine what will be in these documents. . . . Senior members of the Commonwealth Office in London did know what was happening; senior legal officials in London did, to some extent, sanction the use of coercive force; and also, at Cabinet level, the Secretary of State for the Colonies certainly knew of the excesses that were taking place. (The quote is of Anderson)
298. ^ James Blitz (5 April 2011). "Mau Mau case casts light on colonial records". Financial Times. Archived from the original on 10 December 2022. Retrieved 9 April 2011.
299. ^ McGhie, John (9 November 2002). "Kenya: White Terror". Correspondent. BBC. Archived from the original on 6 February 2008. Retrieved 26 May 2012.
300. ^ Macintyre, Ben; Kenber, Billy (15 April 2011). "Hundreds more top secret files missing in Mau Mau abuse case". The Times. Archived from the original on 17 May 2015. Retrieved 26 May 2012. In a statement to the court dated March 8, released to The Times yesterday, Martin Tucker, head of corporate records at the Foreign Office, reported that the 13 missing boxes could not be found. 'There were at one time a further 13 boxes of material retrieved from Kenya at independence which are additional to the documents discovered in Hanslope Park [the closed Foreign Office repository in Buckinghamshire] in January of this year', he wrote. He found evidence that the files had once been stored in the basement of the Old Admiralty Building in Whitehall, but traces of them had vanished after 1995.
301. ^ Elkins, Caroline (18 April 2012). "The colonial papers: FCO transparency is a carefully cultivated myth". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 1 September 2014. Retrieved 7 May 2012.
302. ^ Cobain, Ian (5 October 2012). "Mau Mau torture case: Kenyans win ruling against UK". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 31 October 2013. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
303. ^ Day, Martyn; Leader, Dan (5 October 2012). "The Kenyans tortured by the British must now be justly treated". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
304. ^ Townsend, Mark (23 December 2012). "Fury as Britain fights ruling on Kenya torture victims". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 5 September 2013. Retrieved 6 May 2013.
305. ^ Cobain, Ian; Hatcher, Jessica (5 May 2013). "Kenyan Mau Mau victims in talks with UK government over legal settlement". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 25 June 2023. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
306. ^ Bennett, Huw (5 May 2013). "Kenyan Mau Mau: official policy was to cover up brutal mistreatment". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 10 October 2013. Retrieved 6 May 2013.
307. ^ ^{a b} "Statement to Parliament on settlement of Mau Mau claims". GOV.UK. Archived from the original on 22 March 2019. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
308. ^ "Mau Mau abuse victims to get payouts". 6 June 2013. Archived from the original on 23 March 2019. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
309. ^ Lonsdale 2003, p. 47.
310. ^ Elkins 2005, pp. 360–363: "During the run-up to independence and the years that followed, former loyalists also wielded political clout to consolidate their own interests and power. Under Kenyatta many became influential members of the new government. ... This system of loyalist patronage percolated all the way down to the local level of government, with former Home Guards dominating bureaucracies that had once been the preserve of the young British colonial officers in the African districts. Of the numerous vacancies created by decolonization—powerful posts like provincial commissioner and district commissioner—the vast majority were filled by one time loyalists."
311. ^ Branch 2009, pp. xii–xiii.
312. ^ ^{a b} Jacob Ole Miaron, Permanent Secretary of the Vice President Ministry of State for National Heritage and Culture (26 February 2009). "Speech to the 52nd Commemoration of the Memory of Dedan Kimathi". Archived from the original on 9 October 2011. Retrieved 14 April 2011.
313. ^ "Chapter Two – The Republic" (PDF). Constitution of Kenya, 2010. National Council for Law Reporting. Article 9, p. 15. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 April 2013. Retrieved 11 February 2012. The national days . . . [shall include] Mashujaa Day, to be observed on 20 October.
314. ^ Dominic Odipo (10 May 2010). "Who are Kenya's real heroes?". The Standard. Nairobi: Standard Group. Archived from the original on 21 January 2012. Retrieved 7 June 2010. Changing Kenyatta Day to Mashujaa Day is not just an innocuous and harmless exercise in constitutional semantics.
315. ^ ^{a b} Jenkins, Cathy (22 March 2001). "Monuments for the Mau Mau". BBC News. Archived from the original on 14 May 2006. Retrieved 30 May 2012.
316. ^ Anderson 2005, pp. 335–336: "[Kenyatta] often spoke of the need to 'forgive and forget', and to 'bury the past'. He acknowledged the part the freedom fighters had played in the struggle, but he never once made any public statement that conceded to them any rights or any genuine compensation. Mau Mau was a thing best forgotten. ... In Kenyatta's Kenya there would be a deafening silence about Mau Mau".
317. ^ Branch 2009, pp. xiii–xiv.

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• Wasserman, Gary (1976). Politics of Decolonization: Kenya Europeans and the Land Issue 1960–1965 (digital reprint ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Further reading

• Ali, Tariq (2022). Winston Churchill: his times, his crimes. London ; New York: Verso.
  ISBN 978-1-78873-577-3
  .
• Barnett, Donald; Njama, Karari (2021). Mau Mau from Within: The Story of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army. Daraja Press, republishing original 1966 title.
  ISBN 978-1-988832-59-3
  .
• Bennett, Huw (2012). Fighting the Mau Mau: The British Army and Counter-Insurgency in the Kenya Emergency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  ISBN 978-1-107-02970-5
  .
• Berman, Bruce (1990). Control & Crisis in Colonial Kenya: The Dialectic of Domination. Oxford: James Currey.
  ISBN 978-0-852-55069-4
  .
• Berman, Bruce; Lonsdale, John (1992). Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa; Book One: State & Class. Oxford: James Currey.
  ISBN 978-0-852-55021-2
  .
• Berman, Bruce; Lonsdale, John (1992). Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa; Book Two: Violence & Ethnicity. Oxford: James Currey.
  ISBN 978-0-852-55099-1
  .
• Branch, Daniel (2006). "Loyalists, Mau Mau, and Elections in Kenya: The First Triumph of the System, 1957–1958".
  S2CID 154783897
  .
• Clough, Marshall S. (1990). Fighting Two Sides: Kenyan Chiefs and Politicians, 1918–1940. Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado.
  ISBN 978-0-870-81207-1
  .
• Corfield, Frank (1960). The Origins and Growth of Mau Mau: an Historical Survey ('The Corfield Report'). Nairobi: Government of Kenya.
  ISBN 978-0-521-13090-5
  .
• Derrick, Jonathan (2008). Africa's "Agitators": Militant Anti-Colonialism in Africa and the West, 1918–1939. New York: Columbia University Press.
  ISBN 978-0-231-70056-6
  .
• Elkins, Caroline (2022). Legacy of violence: a history of the British empire. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
  ISBN 978-0-307-27242-3
  .
• OL 14008812M
  .
• Heinlein, Frank (2002). British Government Policy and Decolonisation, 1945–1963: Scrutinising the Official Mind. London: Frank Cass.
  ISBN 978-0-7146-5220-7
  .
• Hewitt, Peter (2008) [1999]. Kenya Cowboy: A Police Officer's Account of the Mau Mau Emergency. Johannesburg: 30° South Publishers.
  ISBN 978-1-920-14323-7
  .
• Kyle, Keith (1999). The Politics of the Independence of Kenya. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  ISBN 978-0-333-72008-0
  .
• ISBN 978-0-586-08870-8
  .
• Lonsdale, John (1990). "Mau Maus of the Mind: Making Mau Mau and Remaking Kenya".
  S2CID 162867744
  .
• Lovatt Smith, David (2005). Kenya, the Kikuyu and Mau Mau. Mawenzi Books.
  ISBN 978-0-954-47132-3
  .
• Lyttelton, Oliver (1962). The Memoirs of Lord Chandos. London: Bodley Head.
• Marsh, Zoe; Kingsnorth, G. W. (1972). A History of East Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  ISBN 978-0-521-08348-5
  .
• Murphy, Philip (1999) [1995]. Party Politics and Decolonization: The Conservative Party and British Colonial Policy in Tropical Africa, 1951–1964. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  ISBN 978-0-19-820505-0
  .
• Murphy, Philip (1999). Alan Lennox-Boyd: A Biography. London: I.B. Tauris.
  ISBN 978-1-86064-406-1
  .
• Njagi, David (1991). The Last Mau Mau (Kenya's Freedom Heroes or Villains?). Nairobi: Property Magazine and Guide.
  OCLC 28563585
  .
• Ogot, Bethwell Allan (2012). "Essence of ethnicity: an African perspective". In Hiroyuki Hino; John Lonsdale; Gustav Ranis & Frances Stewart (eds.). Ethnic Diversity and Economic Stability in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 91–126.
  ISBN 978-1-107-02599-8
  .
• Parsons, Timothy (1999). African Rank-and-File: Social Implications of Colonial Military Service in the King's African Rifles, 1902–1964. Hanover, NH: Heinemann.
  ISBN 978-0-325-00140-1
  .
• Percox, David (2011) [2004]. Britain, Kenya and the Cold War: Imperial Defence, Colonial Security and Decolonisation. London: I.B. Tauris.
  ISBN 978-1-84885-966-1
  .
• Sandgren, David (2012). Mau Mau's Children: The Making of Kenya's Postcolonial Elite. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
  ISBN 978-0-299-28784-9
  .
• ISBN 978-1-444-33522-4
  .
• Throup, David (1987). Economic and Social Origins of Mau Mau, 1945–53. Oxford: James Currey.
  ISBN 978-0-85255-024-3
  .

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mau Mau Uprising.

• Archive newsreels from Pathé News. Includes footage of: military operations against Mau Mau; the capture of Dedan Kimathi; capture of General China (Waruhiu Itote); the survivors of the Lari massacre and the defendants' trial; Operation Anvil.
• Colonial Film's archive footage of Mau Mau
• "Lost" Mau Mau-era government-documents posted by the BBC's Dominic Casciani
• "Mau-Mau" Podcast about the Mau Mau Uprising and British repression from Radiolab (WNYC – New York Public Radio)
• Surrender Pass issued under Baring's 18 January 1955 Amnesty