Product Description
"A remarkable account of Britain's last stand in Kenya. This is imperial history at its very best."--John Hope FranklinIn "a gripping narrative that is all but impossible to put down" (Joseph C. Miller), Histories of the Hanged exposes the long-hidden colonial crimes of the British in Kenya. This groundbreaking work tells how the brutal war between the colonial government and the insurrectionist Mau Mau between 1952 and 1960 dominated the final bloody decade of imperialism in East Africa. Using extraordinary new evidence, David Anderson puts the colonial government on trial with eyewitness testimony from over 800 court cases and previously unseen archives. His research exonerates the Kikuyu rebels; hardly the terrorists they were thought to be; and reveals the British to be brutal aggressors in a "dirty war" that involved leaders at the highest ranks of the British government. This astonishing piece of scholarship portrays a teetering colonial empire in its final phase; employing whatever military and propaganda methods it could to preserve an order that could no longer hold. 18 photographs, 2 maps ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Highly recommended
Anderson's volume is a well-told, highly informative, and often deeply insightful history of the conflict among the British, Mau Mau rebels, and tribal (viz., Kikuyu) loyalists.

The title of the book is a bit of a misnomer, though.It's neither written from the Mau Mau perspective, nor is it a series of biographies of those the British executed (such a series, of course, would be nigh impossible, considering that the British hanged over 1,000).Rather, while sympathetic towards native Kenyans, its sources seemed to me to be mainly white (granted, I'm not looking at the bibliography as I write this).

At any rate, it's a balanced, well-organized account, and well worth reading--even if you are, as I was before I picked it up, entirely ignorant of and uninterested in Mau Mau.

A Lesson Against Brutality
The most striking aspect of this book for me, was that despite the author's appropriately neutral narration, the savagery of Mau MAu still shines like an evil beacon. Anderson makes it perfectly clear that Mau Mau violence was primarily directed against the people of its own Kikuyo tribe, whom it butchered, man woman and child with absolutely no mercy. Infants and mothers, elders and babies, all fell to the bloodied panga of Mau Mau. This was as shocking to Africans as it was to Europeans - and this, Europeans failed to understand. It is this lack of comprehension that makes this book an excellent study of the cultural shock and misunderstanding that arose at the interface between colonist and colonizer.
Mau Mau represented not just rebellion against the injustice inflicted by British colonials, but against traditional African leadership and culture. The question I am left with is why the extreme brutality of MAu Mau arose? The absence of an explanation for this reflects perhaps that although Anderson recounts the history superbly, he really does not succeed in analyzing the mental frameworks of either the settlers or Mau Mau MAu. He never gets to grips adequately with the internalized fears of settlers in Africa or the cultural dislocation arising between Mau MAu and the rest of the Kikuyu tribe. What we are left with is a narration of evil that has sound historical underpinning but an almost non-existent cultural and psychological framework that would permit us to understand the actions of the protagonists at an emotional level. But the murderous actions of all parties remain clear and remain instructive to us in the current age.
Balancing Mau Mau evil with the mass hangings inflicted by the British brings one, once more, to the inevitable conclusion that ALL killing, state sponsored or otherwise was and is, wrong. Neither the British nor Mau Mau come out of this cleanly. We might well reflect on this point when we consider the plight of Israelis and Palestinians in the present.
There is so much more to say about this book, but these are my foremost initial observations. A superb and scholarly book that I shall be using as a resource for many years to come.

a loathsome task
With the fracas about the American prison at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, one could read this book for a different perspective. It looks back at the anti-colonial rebellion in Kenya after World War 2. Best remembered in Britain and the US for the depredations of the Mau Mau. Who were demonised as the terrorists of the 1950s. A war against the Mau Mau was portrayed as a war between civilisation and savagery. See "The Hunt for Kimathi" by Henderson, as an example of the British viewpoint.

But the book writes of a different reality. The Mau Mau were only part of the manifestation of a people rising up against European colonialism. The British resorted to harsh tactics, including the detention of 70 000 Kikuyu, without trial. Here in the text is another and different account of the Kenyan struggle. Independent of the British government, and sympathetic to the Kenyans. Not that the author holds any brief for the Kenyan-style socialism which Jomo Kenyatta pursued after independence.

As the title alludes, the book gives unstinting coverage of the death penalties handed out by the British, in a valiant but futile attempt to hold back the tide. The book reminds me of how in the late 70s, in Perth, Australia, a local newspaper interviewed a white bloke who had been one of the hangmen in Kenya. His job was to execute the convicted guerrillas. But not just hang. Often, the shock of the drop would decapacitate the head. And, in any event, the bowels would evacuate. He had to clean up the mess. "A loathsome task" and "nothing like [what] the movies" depict about the gallows.

To be fair to the British, they were at that time also executing people in Britain by hanging. Albeit in far smaller numbers.

White Settler Empire
As a professional legal historian with an interest in both social history (I was nurtured in "Warwick school" historiography) and in colonial legal histories I have a strong professional interest in the subject matter of David Anderson's account of the Mau Mau period in Kenya.The book is first-rate in all respects.

It is more than this however.Thoughtful and learned, it nonetheless reads beautifully.

The book resonated with my own family history however - as it will for many readers around the world.Born into the British Empire of the 1950's, I was raised in a British settler society (Canada), saluted the Union Jack in school each day, and heard stories of Dominion and Empire as I grew up.The British Empire was the best of all possible Empires and its treatment of subjects more humane than others (the USA "Indian Wars" provided particularly strong contrast for one raised in the prairie west).Part of an Irish diaspora family, my cousins lived and live in the old country but also in Canada, Australia, the United States, and New Zealand.One uncle lived out his days in India and one black sheep dedicated herself to a communist liberation of Ireland (another served Scotland Yard arresting suspected IRA terrorists: I think they never met).

Anderson's account of Mau Mau is disturbing, not just for explaining the violence on all sides and the state excesses conducted in the cause of "security" in times of "terror", but for its account of settler society in a colony where the "native" was in the numerical majority.

Ever-smug, Canadians are too prone to celebrate our country's commitment to civil liberties, human rights, and anti-racism.The parcitular features that make Kenya's "White Highlanders" (as the settler society was known) seem vile, however, are features also present on both sides of the border in North America: the first-people's deprivation of lands; the denial of customary entitlements long-established under native law; the refusal of one generation to acknowledge the wrong-doings of their testators; the insistence on non-native political control; and subtle and not-so-subtle racism directed against the lands' first inhabitants.

Though the reader is drawn at every juncture to critical judgment of "White Highlanders", and - by necessary implication on the part of anyoone locating the book in its temporal and spatial context - white Rhodesians, and the creators of South Africa's apartheid state, no descendant of immigrants to any "settler land" can fail to recognize that their own status bears more relation to the "White Highlanders" than to the "native" victims of colonization.

HISTORIES OF THE HANGED is must-reading for settlers and their children everywhere.

Read against the background of telling classics such as Harold Cardinal's UNJUST SOCIETY, it is informative and disturbing in equal measure.

W. Wesley Pue,
Nemetz Chair in Legal History,
University of British Columbia

F.I.
Even as a child, and as an African, I have always been interested in the TRUE HISTORY of my continent not told by the so called conqueror, which has always shown people who rebel in a disgustingly bad and unture light. Especially the american majority, who somehow get amnesia regarding the how and why this STOLEN LAND got its so called democracy.
Once again, this book is very detailed and tells how and why really the ENTIRE CONTINENT OF AFRICA, was inflicted with dirty politics (GOLDS,DIAMONDS, MINERAL WEALTH, ETC.),for the ill gotten gaines and total disregard of the indgenous people by europe and the united HATES of america.ESPECIALLY THOSE OF COLOUR. ... Read more

Product Description
This book examines the economic history of Kenya from the colonial period to the present, integrating historical methodologies with those of anthropology, economics, education, geography, history, political science and sociology. The book covers topics that have been ignored by previous texts on economic history of Kenya, such as women, indigenous people (Ogiek), pastoralism, irrigation agriculture, livestock, fisheries, religion, community-based organizations (CBOs), NGOs, education and information and communication technology (ICT). ... Read more

Product Description
Cooper examines the critical decades of transition from a slave-based plantation system in East Africa to a colonial economy based on wage labor. ... Read more

Product Description
This book tells for the first time the story of the dirty war the British fought in Kenya, in the run-up to the country's independence in 1964. In 1952, after years of tension and bitterness, the grievances of the Gikuyu people of central Kenya exploded into open rebellion. Only 32 European settlers died in the subsequent fighting, but more than 1,800 African civilians, over 3,000 African police and soldiers, and 12,000 Mau Mau rebels were killed.Between 1953 and 1956 Britain sent over a thousand Kenyans to the gallows, often on trumped up or non-existent charges. Meanwhile 70,000 people were imprisoned in camps without trial for between two and six years. Men and women were kept together in conditions of institutionalised violence overseen by British officials. David Anderson provides a full and convincing account of a war in which all sides behaved badly, and therefore few of the combatants can be either fully excused, or blamed. His book contains the information the press, public and politicians need to decide for themselves about an important aspect of Britain's recent past.These events are still within living memory, and eye-witness testimonies provide the backbone of this controversial story. ... Read more

Product Description
This book details the devastating Mau Mau civil war fought in Kenya during the 1950s and the legacies of that conflict for the post-colonial state. As many Kikuyu fought with the colonial government as loyalists joined the Mau Mau rebellion. Focusing on the role of those loyalists, the book examines the ways in which residents of the country's Central Highlands sought to navigate a path through the bloodshed and uncertainty of civil war. It explores the instrumental use of violence, changes to allegiances, and the ways in which cleavages created by the war informed local politics for decades after the conflict's conclusion. Moreover, the book moves toward a more nuanced understanding of the realities and effects of counterinsurgency warfare. Based on archival research in Kenya and the United Kingdom and insights from literature from across the social sciences, the book reconstructs the dilemmas facing members of society at war with itself and its colonial ruler. ... Read more

Product Description
Extraordinary photographs, along withextensive captions, documentthe transition from a barelyexplored paradise to a modern nation.This stunning collection of 720 photographs, many of them drawn from family archives and scrapbooks and all carefully restored, is one of the mostimportant visual records of Africa in the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries ever to have been published.

The earlyphotographers captured the beauty and dangerousallure of life on this spectacular frontier: the ceremonies and traditional attire of the nativepeople, the fantastic machinery used inconstruction of the Uganda Railway, the gradualdevelopment of trade on the coast and in thecountry's interior, the hardships of the EastAfrican Campaign during World War I, and thepioneering spirit of early European settlers and farmers. Many of the most famous names and places connected with Africa appear in these pages,including Karen Blixen's farm and ErnestHemingway and Theodore Roosevelt on safari. This is a book to delight anyone who has ever traveled to East Africa or been intrigued by itshistory. 720 photographs ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Window to the past
I noticed this book while browsing through B&N one afternoon and after opening it found myself unable to put it down. It's filled with hundreds of brilliant black and white photographs depicting everyday colonial life in Kenya during the late 1800s through mid 1900s. The photos draw you in and offer a fascinating glipse of a bygone era. If you have seen the film Out of Africa and are drawn to the period, this is an excellent companion book. ... Read more

Product Description
In 1922 Muthoni Nyanjiru used the curse of nakedness to damn Europeans who enslaved African girls to pick coffee. In the 1950s thousands of Kenyan women never surrendered in the Mau Mau war to expel the British. In 1992 old women on hunger strike threw off their clothes to protest dictatorship. In using oral histories to tell the stories of Kenyan women in fifteen uprisings across the long 20th century, Land, Food, Freedom reveals Kenyan women's determination to get back their stolen land. Local men who collaborated with British colonial officials and settlers found themselves repeatedly challenged by the organizations and actions of these women. In acting against their dispossession, they inspired a different set of men to stand with them in alliance to defend the gendered commons. Finally, a genealogy of African women s pioneering feminism that inspires tremendous hope and optimism. This book details concrete solutions to current problems and foreshadows the emergence of the new world of the future. Brownhill proves the old adage, always something new out of Africa.Terisa E. Turner, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Guelph, Ontario, CanadaBrownhill s careful analysis provides a thrilling account that both transforms Kenyan historiography and constitutes a great leap forward in building a truly global history of feminist struggle. Wahu Kaara, Global Social Justice Activist, Executive Chair, Kenya Debt Relief Network ... Read more

Product Description
The Social Context of the Mau Mau Movement in Kenya (1952-1960) explores the social climate that united different clans and ethnic groups and sustained the Mau Mau Movement. Through analysis of _Social Movement_ literature, historical accounts, and a first-hand narrative from Muigai Kanyua, a fighter in the Mau Mau forest for at least three years, this new work explores a relatively unexamined aspect of the Mau Mau movement. ... Read more

Product Description
Joseph Daniel Otiende, born in 1917, was a Kenyan nationalist, and a prominent figure in Kenya's fight for independence. He was a cabinet minister in the first independence government contributing to nation building and development. He is now accredited with laying the foundations of the health and education services, and held in high regard as one of the few Kenyan politicians to shun the theory and practice of corruption, and for bowing out of politics at the right moment. This concise biography relates his early life, his work as a teacher during the colonial period, his political activities and his life after politics. It further sets his life into the wider context of a key period in Kenya's history, mediating historical events through the story of an individual, and outlining an individual's contribution to the shaping of history. ... Read more

Product Description

Beginning in the late 1930s, a crisis in colonial Gusiiland developed over traditional marriage customs. Couples eloped, wives deserted husbands, fathers forced daughters into marriage, and desperate men abducted women as wives. Existing historiography focuses on women who either fled their rural homes to escape a new dual patriarchy-African men backed by colonial officials-or surrendered themselves to this new power. Girl Cases: Marriage and Colonialism in Gusiiland, Kenya 1890-1970 takes a new approach to the study of Gusii marriage customs and shows that Gusii women stayed in their homes to fight over the nature of marriage. Gusii women and their lovers remained committed to traditional bridewealth marriage, but they raised deeper questions over the relations between men and women.

During this time of social upheaval, thousands of marriage disputes flowed into local African courts. By examining court transcripts, Girl Cases sheds light on the dialogue that developed surrounding the nature of marriage. Should parental rights to arrange a marriage outweigh women's rights to choose their husbands? Could violence by abductors create a legitimate union? Men and women debated these and other issues in the courtroom, and Brett L. Shadle's analysis of the transcripts provides a valuable addition to African social history.

Product Description
Like new. Paperback.Amazon.com Review
Forty years after Kenyan independence from Britain, the words "Mau Mau" still conjure images of crazed savages hacking up hapless white settlers with machetes. The British Colonial Office, struggling to preserve its far-flung empire of dependencies after World War II, spread hysteria about Kenya's Mau Mau independence movement by depicting its supporters among the Kikuyu people as irrational terrorists and monsters. Caroline Elkins, a historian at Harvard University, has done a masterful job setting the record straight in her epic investigation, Imperial Reckoning. After years of research in London and Kenya, including interviews with hundreds of Kenyans, settlers, and former British officials, Elkins has written the first book about the eight-year British war against the Mau Mau.

She concludes that the war, one of the bloodiest and most protracted decolonization struggles of the past century, was anything but the "civilizing mission" portrayed by British propagandists and settlers. Instead, Britain engaged in an amazingly brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing that seemed to border on outright genocide. While only 32 white settlers were killed by Mau Mau insurgents, Elkins reports that tens of thousands of Kenyans were slaughtered, perhaps up to 300,000. The British also interned the entire 1.5 million population of Kikuyu, the colony's largest ethnic group, in barbed-wire villages, forced-labour reserves where famine and disease ran rampant, and prison camps that Elkins describes as the Kenyan "Gulag." The Kikuyu were subjected to unimaginable torture, or "screening," as British officials called it, which included being whipped, beaten, sodomized, castrated, burned, and forced to eat feces and drink urine. British officials later destroyed almost all official records of the campaign. Elkins infuses her account with the riveting stories of individual Kikuyu detainees, settlers, British officials, and soldiers. This is a stunning narrative that finally sheds light on a misunderstood war for which no one has yet been held officially accountable. --Alex Roslin ... Read more

Customer Reviews (25)

Informative and emotional at times.
I now understand why this part of Kenyan history was never covered at school. Why my mother who was born in 1945 remembers very little and why her parents never spoke about this era. Growing up I was told by almost everyone I asked that Mau Mau's were rebels, savages, and evil murderers. Truly a story has 2 sides.
I loved the book, It was very informative, poignant, detailed and graphic at times. The story line was however a little confusing because the author did not follow a chronological order, in addition there was a lot of repetition. Overall I give this book 2 thumbs up and recommend it to all Kenyans and anyone who loves history.

Imperial reckoneing
A stunning review of events in Kenya shortly before colonialism ended.I recommend this book highly.

The most important thing about the book is the Time Period!!!!!!!
What I find interested about the text is the time frame. Less than a decade after fight the Nazis, the british empire continued to impose it might against those that fought to liberate the so-called mother country. The author rightfully look at the history by presenting evidence about the British deaths at the hands of the Mau Mau fight for land reclamation which became a fight for national liberation.

What the Brutish fear the Nazis might do to them became a mean in Kenya. I am sure some readers might have an issue with the author presentedfacts instead of the long held british media frieindly slants that has been the standard for over half a century. It is good to get the views of the oppressed and liberation fighters who lived under british brutish rule.

I thanks the author for writing this book. In fact, the author started her research with a pro-british view and by the end realized that the colonizers were the terrorists.

Best historical read
I read this book as a supplemental material to an undergraduate course in African Politics. With the background knowledge I had, the story was extremely horrifying but brought to my attention the effects of colonialism I had never before considered or heard of. The connection between WWII, colonialism in Kenya and the present Kenyan state was enhanced significantly after reading this story.

Forgotten History
Ms. Elkins does a good job of writing the story of the Mau-Mau rebellion, which was as she puts it a "decolonization war" in Kenya. Largely forgotten today (not least because it was rapidly overshadowed by events in the Congo, Nigeria and Rhodesia) events in Kenya proved to be an extreme challenge to Britain's post-war efforts to retain security in its extensive overseas possessions.

One piece of the puzzle which is largely ignored today is the success the British had in squelching the Mau-Mau. As deplorable as Ms. Elkins found their methods, the British were able to secure the colony against an insurgency. So much for insurgencies always being successful. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Reviewing Jomo Kenyatta's Writing
This book is one of a kind capturing and documenting traditions fast disappearing.Facing Mount Kenya

Facinga Mt Kenya
Very informative...Loved it!! has everything you need to know of the Kikuyu traditions and culture

Facing Mount Kenya
Jomo Kenyatta's Facing Mount Kenya begins by providing a history of the Gikuyu people, which includes a basic foundation of their society, the divider of the universe (Mogai).In addition, he explains how Europeans gained a foothold in Kenya, Gikuyus thought that they were wanders who needed a place to rest. Yet, the British colonization of the country did not happen fortuitously. In fact, Great Britain used fire sticks to gain control and destroy the existing institutions of the Gikuyus. As a consequence of these iconoclastic actions, the British destroyed the Gikuyu's nomadic life and the democratic government that had been established before imperialism.
However, Kenyatta's description of clitoridectomy is something that might make readers cringe in horror. More importantly, the extensive time spent on the justification of the practice weakens the book, after a while this chapter becomes hackneyed. Yet, Kenyatta has developed an invaluable resource on the history of the Gikuyus, there are few authors who have written on the subject. Furthermore, it is worth noting that the book makes an important observation, the British imposed their culture on Gikuyu people, Kenya, and many other parts of Africa.As a result, Gikuyus have been trying to figure out how to put a square peg into a round hole ever since, a major reason why African countries need foreign aid today.

We have a heritage
Mzee is deep,truly. Too bad I wasn't born early enough to experience him.

I read this book a long time ago-9 years, I was 16 then. It moved me, connected me with a fact of me that I didn't know existed. The tribal ways of the Gikuyu are here in detail-read, make yourself proud.

PS:I have my uncles supervintage copy and I am not selling it

Gikuyu 101
A good sample of a typical african traditional government. A historical account of the Agikuyu. ... Read more

Product Description
Kenya, a land of safaris, wild animals, and Maasai warriors, perfectly represents Africa for many Westerners. This peerless single-source book presents the contemporary reality of life in Kenya, an important East-African nation that has served as a crossroads for peoples and cultures from Africa, the Middle East, and East Asia for centuries. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

There's no one more knowledgeable...
Dr. Sobania has spent years in Kenya and eastern Africa, and his knowledge is superlative.On top of the great information, he is an interesting writer with fresh perspective, thoughtful insight, and little "first world" cultural bias.It says a lot that this book re-sells for the same price (just about) as it costs new. Splurge and learn something about a truly amazing part of your ever-shrinking planet. ... Read more

Product Description

"... an up-to-date, comprehensive, and accessible single-volume text to introduce the Mau Mau movement and its part in Kenya's nationalism and independence..."  -- International Journal of African Historical Studies

"Mau Mau and Kenya is a well written work which provides a clear and candid picture of the highly complex movements that were Mau Mau." -- African History

Mau Mau and Kenya traces a unique peasant revolt against British colonialism. Was Mau Mau a national effort or an ethnic outburst? What were its political aims? Maloba describes the participants and their differing ideologies; relationships between the revolt and the conventional party politics of the Kenya African Union; and the impact of Mau Mau on decolonization in Kenya.

Product Description

"This is altogether a most worthwhile book, a fine example of a growing genre of African literature... " -- Choice

"Mirza and Strobel let these women speak about their lives in their own words, and the results are wonderful.... This is an excellent book with which to introduce students both to Africa and to life histories... " -- American Historical Review

This exploration of the lives of three Mombasa women reveals the complexity of Swahili society -- its ethnic diversity, the impact of slavery, and the varied reactions to colonialism and Western culture. They illustrate the rich interactions within the women's community, focused on family and festive or ritual occasions.

Customer Reviews (1)

SLOW AND CONFUSING IN PARTS, BUT OK OVERALL.
"Three Swahili Women" is a book I read for a class I was taking on Islam and Popular Culture in Africa. Edited and translated by Sarah Mirza and Margeret Strobel, the book is the life story as told by three women who lived along the Swahili coast of Africa. The first two life-stories are by Kaje wa Mwenye Matano and Mishi wa Abdala. Sadly, these two stories are confusing, plodding, and rather dull in parts. They seem less like stories, and more like rambling. However, the fault is neither the translators or the two women themselves. Neither women had proper education, and so they were talking in the traditional dialect of their people. Even when translated, it can be a difficult interview to read.
The third story is by Shamsha Muhamad Muhashamy, and this is the best one of the bunch. Her story is fascinating, and less confusing, as she had a proper education. Her account makes reading through the first two stories worth the wait.
Overall, the book is an OK look into the life of three Muslim women along the Swahili Coast of Africa. It may not fascinate some, and others will probably have to read it twice. But if you're interested in the people of Africa, then this may be the best place for you to start.
Grade: B-
... Read more

Product Description
This book depicts the history of Lamu, once an important East African port city, now known as an unspoiled tourist destination and scenic location for Hollywood movies.

Records from both the distant past and the more recent period give voice to the opinions of the WaAmu on many issues: Islam, slavery, material culture, and the wide-ranging effects of colonialism. Here we read about clashes between matriarchy as practiced in Central Africa and the Arab-based patriarchy in family and social life.

Romero weaves into her account fascinating aspects of Lamu's material culture, social structure, and family life among those who are called the Swahili. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A pair of reviews for Lamu
"With this sensible book, Romero has prepared a careful study of modern Lamu that dissects fact from fantasy. The author provides new insights into the impact of slavery and the slave trade on the upper East African coast, on the introduction of British colonial rule and the British rivalries with German and French merchants and their diplomatic supporters, on health issues, on agricultural practices, and on religious and other ceremonial practices. Her discussion of the transition from Arab to Swahili to Anglo-Swahili to African Arab culture is important, and is a reflection of Lamu's crossroads position commercially and culturally. Romero's treatment of homosexuality and related sexual activities is, given Lamu's notoriety, rather abbreviated. This book is an example of microhistory, well practiced, and in no antiquarian mode."
-Choice

"provides a wealth of precious information...offers the reader documentary sources"
--Journal of Islamic Studies 10, no. 2 (1999) ... Read more