Mau Mau crucible of war

On the 20th of October 1952 Governor Evelyn Baring declared a State of Emergency in the colony of Kenya in response to the threat posed by the so-called Mau Mau uprising, an armed revolt by mainly Kikuyu and related ethnic groups that contested the injustices inflicted by the colonial regime. Whereas the British lifted the State of Emergency in 1960 after a tough military campaign, a legal manhunt, and the imposition of work camps, Mickie Mwanzia Koster and Nicholas K. Githuku argue in their respective books that a ‘Mau Mau mindset’ or ‘mentalité of struggle’ has persisted and remains ever-present in contemporary Kenya. While the former evinces this claim by discussing the transformation of the Mau Mau ritual of oathing through time, the latter perceives later movements, such as the Mungiki, Sabaot Land Defense Force or the Mombasa Republican Council, as reincarnations of the Mau Mau insofar as their underlying grievances and their disillusionment with the state are concerned. Both authors take an approach from below that centres on the aspirations of the ‘common’ people using archival data, such as transcripts of court cases, complaints and petitions, existing literature (Githuku), as well as interviews with former-Mau Mau and their descendants (Koster)

Colonialism · Ethnic group · Ethnology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Gender Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law

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