From Publishers Weekly
Anderson's authoritative history of the last days of the British Empire in Kenya focuses on the colonial judicial system, which sent over 1,000 native Kenyans to the gallows between 1952 and 1959, during the state of emergency triggered by the Mau Mau insurrection. At the heart of the tale, along with blustering colonial ineptitude, is white settler ignorance of how its land grabs wreaked havoc on the Kikuyu tribe, Kenya's largest ethnic group and a people viciously targeted by the British, who were intent on rooting out Mau Mau activism at all costs. Anderson, a lecturer in African studies at Oxford, shows how paternalistic land reallocations and relocation of the Kenyan tribes to settlements fostered deep resentment, sewing the seeds of a bloody black-on-black massacre in 1952. Brilliantly analyzing the hierarchies and nuances of Kenyan society, Anderson traces how the Mau Mau hijacked the nationalist Kenya African Union, how the British scapegoated moderate leader Jomo Kenyatta and finally how the British herded virtually the entire Kikuyu population into horrific concentration camps, where thousands perished. Anderson's information-rich history vividly depicts the complex political and social dynamics of the Kenyan nationalist movement as it was confronted by the brutal waning British Empire. This is vital reading for any student of British colonial and African history. B&w photos not seen by PW; maps. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
Anderson's history of the violence in 1950s Kenya overlaps slightly with that depicted in Caroline Elkins' Imperial Reckoning [BKL N 15 04], which covered the detention-and-camp system established by the British colonial administration. In Anderson's effort, the entire Mau-Mau rebellion comes into view, including aspects of warfare and judicial punishment, particularly the application of the death penalty. Anderson's close analysis of capital trials supports his narrative of the origin of the anticolonial Mau-Mau movement, its perpetration of the gruesome murders of white settlers, and the state of emergency and military countermeasures that defeated the insurgency. Anderson weighs the evidence in concluding that these trials were an expedient means of retribution rather than models of legality. They also reflect the fact that it was a civil war within the Kikuyu community, exemplified in the war's "iconographic moment," a ghastly massacre and a subsequent revenge-massacre that convulsed the Kikuyu town of Lari. A dispassionate but disturbing account, Anderson's history will be vital to understanding Kenya's terrible endgame of colonialism. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Stephen Howe, Oxford University
Will transform our understanding of how the British Empire ended...and force a wide re-evaluation of Britain's modern history.


Simon Sebag-Montefiore, author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Star
Scholarly yet fascinating, unsettling in its revisionism yet readable in its macabre narrative.


Joseph C. Miller, author of the Herskovitz Prize-winning Way of Death
[A] gripping narrative... a movingly balanced, even sympathetic, understated, and insightful narrative and analysis...all-but-impossible to put down.


Joanna Bourke, author of An Intimate History of Killing
Essential reading, not only for everyone interested in decolonisation, but also for people appalled by human rights abuses today


Richard J. Evans, author of Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany 1600-1987
A brilliantly-written and powerfully-argued portrayal of the political use of the death penalty to crush rebellion.


Book Description
A groundbreaking work of colonial history in the tradition of King Leopold's Ghost and The Boer War. A riveting account of Britain's final bloody decade in Kenya, this book tells the story of the brutal war between the colonial government and the insurrectionist Mau Mau between 1952 and 1960. New findings cast the Gikuyu rebels—hardly the terrorists they were thought to be—in a new light and reveal the British to be brutal aggressors in a "dirty war" that involved, among others, Winston Churchill and Harold MacMillan. This astonishing piece of scholarship portrays a teetering colonial empire in its final phase—employing whatever military and propaganda methods were necessary to preserve an order that could no longer hold. 18 photographs, 2 maps.


About the Author
David Anderson is lecturer in African studies at Oxford University. He was formerly director of the Center for African Studies at the University of London. He lives in England.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"In this book, a searing account of the final, bloody decade of British rule in Kenya, Oxford historian David Anderson presents new findings so extraordinary that they promise not only to redefine our understanding of the brutal war between the colonial government and the insurrectionist Mau Mau but also to reveal our historical dishonesty in failing to distinguish between terrorists and political insurgents." Anderson's work reveals how, in the course of suppressing the Mau Mau revolt, Kenya's British rulers were responsible for thousands of unjustifiable killings, for gross abuses of both their own law and the laws of war, and for what are possibly the most brutal episodes of legal and physical oppression in twentieth-century imperial history. In uncovering thousands of new files and court transcripts, Anderson reveals that the British, with the knowledge of both Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan, committed untold atrocities against Kenyan subjects, putting over 70,000 people in prison camps and sending hundreds to the gallows without proper trial.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Anderson's authoritative history of the last days of the British Empire in Kenya focuses on the colonial judicial system, which sent over 1,000 native Kenyans to the gallows between 1952 and 1959, during the state of emergency triggered by the Mau Mau insurrection. At the heart of the tale, along with blustering colonial ineptitude, is white settler ignorance of how its land grabs wreaked havoc on the Kikuyu tribe, Kenya's largest ethnic group and a people viciously targeted by the British, who were intent on rooting out Mau Mau activism at all costs. Anderson, a lecturer in African studies at Oxford, shows how paternalistic land reallocations and relocation of the Kenyan tribes to settlements fostered deep resentment, sewing the seeds of a bloody black-on-black massacre in 1952. Brilliantly analyzing the hierarchies and nuances of Kenyan society, Anderson traces how the Mau Mau hijacked the nationalist Kenya African Union, how the British scapegoated moderate leader Jomo Kenyatta and finally how the British herded virtually the entire Kikuyu population into horrific concentration camps, where thousands perished. Anderson's information-rich history vividly depicts the complex political and social dynamics of the Kenyan nationalist movement as it was confronted by the brutal waning British Empire. This is vital reading for any student of British colonial and African history. B&w photos not seen by PW; maps. Agent, Georgina Capel, London. (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Lecturer in African studies at Oxford, Anderson examines the bloody Mau Mau uprising that ended British rule in Kenya. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews