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Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire

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This expose of the English colonial history of Kenya does a good job setting the record straight on some key issues, and brings to light the suppressed shadow side of the endgme during the period of the Mau Mau. The infamous reputation of the Mau Mau always deflected attention from the totally inept and repressive nature of the last hurrah of the colonialists in the sunset of the British Empire. The colonialization of Kenya was ill-conceived and predatory from the start, and the whole history was a riddled with a set of contradictions, such as the artificial creation of the exploitative white settler culture dooming Kenyan development from the first. You cannot let loose such a gang of people such as the white settler crowd, poor white trash in a true sense, without the rapid appearance of a malignant culture and infrastructure. This account brings to light what was quickly downplayed, the massive repression of the Kikuyu during the Emergency, with the creation of acutal Gulags. The depiction of many of the judicial processes of the period, including the trial of Jomo Kenyatta, is of a mockery of justice. The Kenyan style colony was really an instance of the Empire in decline from its nineteenth century peak and at least the British had the sense after Suez not to prolong the inevitable. See also _Imperial Reckoning_, by Elkins

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.

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

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.

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.

There was nothing like MAU MAU. I was born in the 70's, a kikuyu in a remote rural Nyeri Kenya. I have managed to interview more than 100 kikuyu fighters who participated from both ends: Kamatimu(fought for mzungu(white)) Kikuyu warriors(fought for their land and cultural heritage. If you are a pure british in UK today, just try pronouncing the word MUMA. I have interviewed over 100 whites of british descendants in America and they pronounce the word MUMA as mou mou. it sounds mau mau. Mau mau was a fabricated name by the british murderers placed on top of helpless kikuyu men and women who could not stand white trash nuisance any longer. At times, death is too cheap. Lucky is the current generation who do not have to make decisions between life and death. World war II lasted 3 years, Emergency in Kenya lasted for a decade or longer. Britain killed more than a million Kikuyus, during this decade, not 300,000. The white trash settlers had no human heart and this is why the Kikuyu warriors butchered those who collaborated with them the way they did. I still do not comprehend why Britain could massacre helpless humans on this scale 50 years ago. Once again there was nothing like MAUMAU. It was a fabricated name to have a reason to massacre innocent humans and take away whatever little they had. MUMA was an oath that was administered in Kikuyu culture centuries and centuries ago. Britain need to feel ashamed of these actions. Britain need to know that the current generation is well aware of exactly what happened and Kikiuyus are working day and night searching for mass graves although most bodies were thrown in Sagana River and others thrown deep in the lakes. It's quite hard to obliterate a whole human species entirely. The irony that Is quite extreme to understand is that Britain piggybanked on religion and then ...

I guess you can just forgive even in death to keep your peace of mind and maintain your sanity.
Jonah Karicho Ndiritu

This book is a great read if you want to learn about what the British did to the peole of Kenya. I do not want to give away the story but the British has done a lot to different people around the globe. It is amazing that when you fight for your land and your freedom they call you savages and call you a troublemaker. The Kenyans fought with the British in WWII but at home in their country they could not be free.

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.