Mau Mau: The Kenyan Emergency 1952-60

Book 7 of 28: Africa@War

The Second World War and the British Empire

The Second World War forever altered the complexion of the British Empire. From Cyprus to Malaya, from Borneo to Suez, the dominoes began to fall within a decade of peace in Europe.

• Africa in the late 1940s and 1950s was energized by:
  • The grant of independence to India.
  • The emergence of a credible indigenous intellectual and political caste poised to inherit control from the waning European imperial powers.

The British, on the whole, managed to disengage from Africa with a minimum of ill feeling and violence, conceding power in:

• The Gold Coast.
• Nigeria.
• Sierra Leone.

This was achieved under an orderly constitutional process, with only the suppression of civil disturbances in Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia as the practicalities of political handover were negotiated.

Kenya: A Different Story

In Kenya, however, the situation was markedly different:

• A vociferous local settler lobby had accrued significant economic and political authority under a local legislature.
• British settlers of wealth and influence, many with familial ties to Whitehall, exerted pressure and were utterly irreconciled to the notion of any kind of political handover.

Mau Mau Uprising:

• Mau Mau was less than a liberation movement but much more than a mere civil disturbance.
• It was one of the first violent confrontations in sub-Saharan Africa over the question of the self-determination of the masses.
• It epitomized the quandary faced by white settler communities in Africa, who had been promised utopia in an earlier century, only to face the post-war reality of black political aspiration.

The Journey Through British East Africa

This book explores:

• The birth of British East Africa as a settled territory of the Empire.
• The politics of confrontation stemming from the unequal distribution of resources and power.
• The emergence and growth of Mau Mau.
• The strategies applied by the British to confront and nullify this tactically inexpert but powerfully symbolic black expression of political violence.

The Legacy of Mau Mau

While the Mau Mau revolt was suppressed and peace restored, its significance was far-reaching:

• It set the tone for Kenyan independence, blurring the clean line of victory and defeat.
• Events in the colony were swept along by the greater movement of Africa toward independence.
• This culminated in the establishment of majority rule in Kenya in 1964.