Hit ‘em where it hurts, their wallets – Reconsidering coercion beyond interpersonal violence in Mau Mau Kenya

By Thomas Wright (tw546@york.ac.uk) During the fight for control of Central Kenya in the early years of the Mau Mau Emergency, authorities used collective punishments as the primary method to impose their dominance over the recalcitrant Kenyan countryside. Yet, in recent years, influenced as much by events in the media and court room as elsewhere, […]

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‘The Trouble with The English’: Mau Mau’s Place in The Present Debate about Imperial Legacies

By Niels Boender The sudden ubiquitousness of debates about historical memory, driven by important awakenings regarding systematic injustices, have thrust historians to the centre of what is now popularly called ‘the culture wars’. This offers an opportunity for historians to share their findings in ways that palpably impact understandings of global and national histories, as […]

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Britain’s Mau Mau Detention Camps

By Lauren Brown. The history of the British Empire has long been framed as a heroic, civilising mission that successfully thrust ‘inferior’ societies into modernity. Thankfully, such rose-tinted nostalgia has begun to fade. The Mau Mau Rebellion of 1952-1964 was a particularly brutal period of British colonial history. Fed by decades of anger over the […]

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