Mau Mau: An African Crucible

by Robert B. Edgerton

The Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s was portrayed as the work of a primitive cult who exercised violence against white settlers in Kenya. Edgerton shows that in reality the Mau Mau were a national liberation army like many others that rose up against the British in the twilight of Empire. 8-page photo insert.

Genres: History, Africa, Nonfiction, Kenya

304 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1989

Reviews

[Donna Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Starting in late 1952 the Mau Mau Rebellion, spearheaded by members of the Kikuyu tribe, was the result of resentment of decades of colonial rule by the British. The majority of Kenya's white settlers shared the belief that Africans were inferior, childlike beings who should be denied social equality, not to mention self-government. As a result of the settlers' racism and their demand for profit, they consistently ignored the welfare of Africans who grew poorer and more aggrieved. When the African protest movement arose, the settlers demanded that the government smash them. Though the Mau Mau did massacre some white settlers, these murders were relatively few in number, fewer than the number of traffic fatalities in the country during the same period. The government, police, army and settlers tortured, maimed and killed thousands of suspected Mau Mau, sometime in cold blood, generally with no due process. As historian CLR James stated, "The cruelties of property and privilege are always more ferocious than the revenges of poverty and oppression." In the end the Mau Mau Rebellion was a failure. It nevertheless resulted in Britain recognizing the enormous cost of trying to defend the colony and to maintain the status quo. In 1963 Kenya gained independence.

This was a wonderfully well-balanced look at the issues in Kenya from the 1950s and 1960s. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to understand that period.

[Sia Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

I lived in Kenya as a child for several years, soon after independence. The Mau Mau uprising was long over by then, but I heard stories about it from my friends. I learned a lot from this book about the context for the uprising, the British oppression, and the atrocities on both sides. It was of course interesting to read about people and places I had heard of or known. Kenya is a beautiful country with a rich and diverse culture. I am lucky to have lived there at a relatively peaceful and stable time in its history.

[Zo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fast moving story of the 1950s Mau-Mau rebellion for Kenyan independence, which also provides some coverage of the colonial period leading up to rebellion (~1880-1950) and the transition to independence that followed (1960-80). Nearly every page manages to shock and horrify with the atrocities, injustices, and instances of inhumanity that fill every corner of this history. The lead-up to the rebellion is a typical story of colonial aggression: white settlers came to Kenya in droves, seeking land and natural resources, upending traditional tribal lifestyles, building a railroad over the din of local protestation, taking land, and eventually subjugating locals to lives of servitude and bare minimum compensation labor. Political power was entirely held in British hands and the Kenyan people existed as segregated, second-class citizens. Particularly repulsive in this story is the decadent lifestyle the British settlers lived — doted on by servants, spending all their free time drinking and sporting at various clubs; it was thoroughly amoral debauchery that rested on an unthinking, bigoted conviction of privilege and superiority. It should be no surprise then that by the late 1940s/early 50s many of the Kikuyu people (who made up much of the servant and farm-laborer class for the settlers) were fed up, and decided to form an organization to fight for their land, rights, independence, and freedom. This was the “Mau-Mau” rebellion - a clearly justified cause - which was nonetheless portrayed by the British press as a terrorist organization, and treated similarly by the police forces and British military units sent in to quell the movement. Some of the reason for this treatment is that the Mau-Mau did adopt highly aggressive tactics, and committed a number of gruesome murders of British settlers — but the unwillingness of the settler population to see the legitimate grievances the movement stood on is unforgivable. I think the rebellion can be usefully thought of along the lines of something like John Brown’s insurrection: the extremist tactics do not appeal to the pacifist and liberal tendencies of my own thought, but given the circumstances faced blame cannot be levied for having such an attitude, and it is possible that a degree of radicalism was necessary to make people see the horror of the existing system. Now the tragedy of the Mau-Mau rebellion is that unlike the case of John Brown, the movement was not successful: the British government responded with an overwhelming use of military force, settlers were emboldened to rape, kill, and terrorize Mau-Mau rebels and many other Kenyans not even involved in the insurrection, and the rebels who were not killed were sent en masse to detention camps where cruel beatings, unlivable conditions, and forced labor was the norm. I am not going to get into all the details here but Edgerton spends page after page documenting the various barbarities committed by the Brits (as well as the Kenyan policemen who worked for the Brits); and the entire history is sickening — the average British settler clearly thought Kenyans simply did not deserve to be treated with even a modicum of human decency.

What takes the rebellion from tragedy to tragic irony is that just a few years after the rebellion was officially quashed and the state of emergency in Kenya suspended (~1957-1961), political pressures from around the world (i.e. the Belgium Congo) had turned the tide against colonialism, and Jomo Kenyatta was elected to lead independent Kenya by 1963 (part of the fascinating history here is that Kenyatta was imprisoned in a sham trial in the early 50s on the charge of starting the Mau-Mau rebellion even though he was not in fact involved). I don’t know enough about the history to really evaluate the question but from the way things are presented here it seems like the eventual independence was not really a result of the Mau-Mau rebellion, but more a product of the changing political times. Regardless, Kenyatta came to power and the story largely ends there, though unrest continued amongst former Mau-Mau rebels who felt like they were unfairly treated by the post-independence government and never given the land and honor they deserved. Today in Kenya the rebellion is little taught and seen more as an instance of excess than a glorious act in the struggle for independence. Why that is so seems to be because of Kenyatta’s desire to appease the British and transition to power in more moderate, less provocative fashion; but the aftermath of independence is not the focus here, and it is something I would now like to read more about. To me, it seems a shame that this history is treated with such neglect; maybe it is just Edgerton’s presentation, but I left this book convinced that the rebellion was by and large a noble cause that deserves to be studied and honored (a la John Brown). Not to mention that it leaves one with the usual list of questions and discomforts over the legacy of colonialism: how such behavior could ever have been thought justified, and what the appropriate response is by the world today. Edgerton is a little more focused on narrative details than conceptual overview than I would like, but I enjoyed his writing style, and thought he did a great job presenting lots of (charged) information in a readable and what felt like “fair” manner.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robert B. Edgerton’s 1989 book, Mau Mau: An African Crucible is a history of Mau Mau. Edgerton is a professor of anthropology and psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles. Edgerton was writing the book in Kenya during the 1980s. The last two chapters of the book cover the complex way the Mau Mau Movement is remembered in Kenya under President Daniel Arap Moi. Edgerton was writing the book while the Apartheid South Africa and ‘The Troubles in Northern Ireland was taking place as the Anthropologist Philip L. Kilbride of Bryn Mawr College reminds readers on the back of the book. Edgerton does not mention “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland or Apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, but it is interesting to think of the time in which Edgerton was writing the book, Mau Mau. I agree with the Political Scientist Edmond J. Keller of the University of California, Santa Barbara that the book is a “comprehensive, sensitive, and balanced account of the movement and its impact” on the back of the book. Edgerton shows how the Mau Mau Movement was viewed by different populations as the Kenyan populations responded to the Mau Mau Movement and why different populations responded this way to the Mau Mau. I found Edgerton’s book was a wonderful introduction to the Mau Mau Movement.

[Steve M. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I lie again. I didn't finish this. I'm very interested in the subject matter, having been exposed to it a bit way back in my undergrad African history days, and was therefore disappointed that this was poorly written and poorly structured. And even more disappointed that I have another book by this dude about the rise and fall of the Ashanti empire in Ghana, which is also a subject of great interest for me.

[Thom Dunn]

1989 publication...long after the rebellion.