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Summary
Summary
A major work of history that for the first time reveals the violence and terror at the heart of Britain's civilizing mission in Kenya As part of the Allied forces, thousands of Kenyans fought alongside the British in World War II. But just a few years after the defeat of Hitler, the British colonial government detained nearly the entire population of Kenya's largest ethnic minority, the Kikuyu-some one and a half million people.The compelling story of the system of prisons and work camps where thousands met their deaths has remained largely untold-the victim of a determined effort by the British to destroy all official records of their attempts to stop the Mau Mau uprising, the Kikuyu people's ultimately successful bid for Kenyan independence.Caroline Elkins, an assistant professor of history at Harvard University, spent a decade in London, Nairobi, and the Kenyan countryside interviewing hundreds of Kikuyu men and women who survived the British camps, as well as the British and African loyalists who detained them.The result is an unforgettable account of the unraveling of the British colonial empire in Kenya-a pivotal moment in twentieth- century history with chilling parallels to America's own imperial project. Imperial Reckoning is the winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction.
Author Notes
Caroline Elkins is an assistant professor of history at Harvard University. Conversant in Swahili and some Kikuyu, she has spent nearly a decade traveling and working in rural Africa. She and her research were the subjects of a 2002 BBC documentary entitled Kenya:White Terror . This is her first book. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In a major historical study, Elkins, an assistant professor of history at Harvard, relates the gruesome, little-known story of the mass internment and murder of thousands of Kenyans at the hands of the British in the last years of imperial rule. Beginning with a trenchant account of British colonial enterprise in Kenya, Elkins charts white supremacy's impact on Kenya's largest ethnic group, the Kikuyu, and the radicalization of a Kikuyu faction sworn by tribal oath to extremism known as Mau Mau. Elkins recounts how in the late 1940s horrific Mau Mau murders of white settlers on their isolated farms led the British government to declare a state of emergency that lasted until 1960, legitimating a decade-long assault on the Kikuyu. First, the British blatantly rigged the trial of and imprisoned the moderate leader Jomo Kenyatta (later Kenya's first postindependence prime minister). Beginning in 1953, they deported or detained 1.4 million Kikuyu, who were systematically "screened," and in many cases tortured, to determine the extent of their Mau Mau sympathies. Having combed public archives in London and Kenya and conducted extensive interviews with both Kikuyu survivors and settlers, Elkins exposes the hypocrisy of Britain's supposed colonial "civilizing mission" and its subsequent coverups. A profoundly chilling portrait of the inherent racism and violence of "colonial logic," Elkins's account was also the subject of a 2002 BBC documentary entitled Kenya: White Terror. Her superbly written and impassioned book deserves the widest possible readership. B&w photos, maps. Agent, Jill Kneerim. (Jan. 11) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
In the immediate aftermath of militarily crushing the Mau Mau rebellion in early 1950s colonial Kenya, British authorities organized a detention-and-camp system they informally called the Pipeline. This work, originating from the author's doctoral dissertation, describes the Pipeline, insofar as it is possible since Elkins discovered that records about the Pipeline were sparse indeed, likely evidence of a documentary bonfire lit before the British granted Kenya independence in 1963. Surmounting that obstacle, Elkins recovers sufficient information about the Pipeline to--whatever its rationale in the minds of its creators for suppressing the murderously vicious Mau Mau--condemn it wholesale. The catalog of cruelty Elkins uncovered--bits from surviving documents, more from interviewing survivors--makes for quite nauseating reading that descends the slope of depravity from torture to outright killing. Inevitably news of incidents leaked out, igniting parliamentary rows in London, which Elkins chronicles with contained fury. Filling a previously blank page in history, Elkins' pioneering study is a crucial recording of Kenyan history in particular, and that of African decolonization in general. --Gilbert Taylor Copyright 2004 Booklist
Choice Review
From 1952 until 1959, Britain's Kenya colony was jolted by the Mau Mau insurgency, which was portrayed as a barbaric, anti-European, anti-Christian, terrorist attempt to overturn British "civilization." The Mau Mau insistence that they were fighting for ithaka na wiyathi, or land and freedom, was dismissed as completely absurd. British forces first mounted an offensive against 20,000 Mau Mau guerrillas in remote mountain forests and later directed a much larger campaign against 1.5 million ethnic Kikuyu, who were believed to have taken the Mau Mau oath. To defeat these Mau Mau suspects, the British constructed a vast system of detention camps that eventually held as many as 320,000 men, women, and children. Elkins's scholarship has focused on this "Pipeline," as it was called, and discovered "a pornography of terror," fully commensurate with any Nazi concentration camp or Soviet gulag. The British public was misled: Conservative government rhetoric said the "boys in Kenya" were "fighting a war for human progress against godless savages." Labour Party leaders feebly objected. Harold Macmillan won reelection, and then, quite suddenly, realized the truth. Jomo Kenyatta was released, and Uhuru, independence, was achieved. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All levels and libraries. W. W. Reinhardt Randolph-Macon College
Kirkus Review
A careful investigation of Kenya's Mau Mau uprising and the manifold crimes by the British colonial government in attempting to suppress it. Half a century ago, tales of Mau Mau atrocities filled the world's newspapers, along with lurid photographs depicting butchered innocents and ransacked farms. Such atrocities did occur over the decade-long course of the uprising, writes Elkins (History/Harvard). But she opens long-closed files in British archives--those that survived a systematic effort to destroy them--to reveal that greater atrocities were committed by the colonial regime, which was ill-equipped to understand, much less accommodate, the demands of the native Kikuyu. Inspired by such leaders as Jomo Kenyatta, who spent most of the uprising in prison, the Kikuyu of northern Kenya had taken to resisting the colonial government with various levels of violence, an effort that the government averred was meant to expel all Europeans from the country. Elkins observes that nonindigenous society was sharply divided among very wealthy landowners, who tended to be English, and much less affluent farmers whose parents and grandparents had come from South Africa during the Boer War, bringing the doctrine of white racial superiority with them. From their ranks, using tactics tried in Malaya and elsewhere in the colonial empire, the aristocratic government drew recruits for police and military units that went to work burning villages, relocating their residents to concentration camps, and rounding up and executing suspected Mau Mau. Less concerned with restoring order than subduing the population, the British colonial government and army allowed these Home Guard units free hand. "None of the high-ranking officials . . . actually believed that the standards of British law applied to Africa," Elkins writes, "and particularly not while they were fighting a war against savagery." In her estimation as many as 100,000 Kikuyu died, making the war against them one of the bloodiest in European colonial history. Sure to touch off scholarly debate and renew interest in recent, deliberately forgotten history. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
More on the Mau Mau uprising. Harvard historian Elkins focuses on the prisons that cost thousands of lives. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
From Imperial Reckoning :"The colonial propaganda machine, once well-oiled, preyed on the detainees' doubts and fears. Pamphlets in the vernacular, pointing out how misguided was the detainees' belief that African land had been stolen by the British, were circulated throughout the compound. At the same time, loudspeakers blared warnings about ongoing land confiscations, describing how land taken from Mau Mau sympathizers was being redistributed to those loyal to the British cause. "Confess and Save Your Land," was one public broadcast played throughout the Pipeline, and it is bitterly remembered by many of the former detainees today. So too are photographs of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth in full regalia, which were displayed alongside images of Jomo Kenyatta in shackles, wild-haired and looking rather dazed and pathetic. The contrast between civilization and savagery could not have been more stark." Excerpted from Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.