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

David Anderson
4.06/5 (287 ratings)
Read Now Download Now
RARELY DOES A WORK OF HISTORY fundamentally rewrite our notions of a country, a people, and a revolution. In Histories of the Hanged, a searing account of the final, bloody decade of British rule in Kenya, Oxford historian David Anderson presents new findings so extraordinary that they promise not only to redefine our understanding of the brutal war between the colonial government and the insurrectionist Mau Mau but also to reveal our historical dishonesty in failing to distinguish between terrorists and political insurgents.

A riveting account of the British experience in colonial Kenya, Histories of the Hanged begins much earlier than the actual hostilities, which decimated Kenya between 1952 and 1960. Explaining how thousands of British settlers began displacing native Kenyans as early as 1900, Anderson reveals how the British appropriated the most fertile Kenyan land at the beginning of the twentieth century, precipitating an exodus of Kenyans to urban areas, where poverty and deep discontent festered, particularly among the Kikuyu people. In the economic depression the followed World War II, the ardent nationalism of the Kikuyu-based Mau Mau attracted new recruits at a revolutionist pace that few could have imagined.

Anderson's astonishing piece of historical detective work reveals how, in the course of suppressing the Mau Mau revolt, Kenya's British rulers were responsible for thousands of unjustifiable killings, for gross abuses of both their own law and the laws of war, and for what are probably the most brutal episodes of legal and physical oppression in twentieth-century imperial history. In uncovering thousands of new files and court transcripts, Anderson reveals that the British, with the knowledge of both Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan, committed untold atrocities against Kenyan subjects, putting over 70,000 people in prison camps and sending hundreds to the gallows without proper trial.

Uncovering the scanty evidence against the defendants, and the methods of torture by which the British extracted many of their confessions, Histories of the Hanged presents the infamous Mau Mau trials, the most perfunctory and shamefully brutal legal proceedings carried out anywhere in Britain's sprawling empire. And while the perception in the West was of the Mau Mau as bloodthirsty terrorists, intent on slaughtering innocent white civilians and harmless children, the truth is that the Kikuyu rebels killed only thirty-two white colonists and that the real aggressors in this "dirty war" were the high-ranking members of the British government.

Histories of the Hanged is a brilliantly told and deeply shocking story. eyewitness testimonies put the imperial British government on trial, and the secret history of the Mau Mau revolt is revealed in official and intelligence reports, interviews, and the personal stories of governors, guerrilla fighters, and victims. Appearing at a critical juncture in early twenty-first-century history, Histories of the Hanged may be more timely than we previously thought.
Format:
Pages:
pages
Publication:
Publisher:
Edition:
Reprint
Language:
eng
ISBN10:
039332754X
ISBN13:
9780393327540
kindle Asin:
B004LP1Z9A

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

David Anderson
4.06/5 (287 ratings)
Read Download
RARELY DOES A WORK OF HISTORY fundamentally rewrite our notions of a country, a people, and a revolution. In Histories of the Hanged, a searing account of the final, bloody decade of British rule in Kenya, Oxford historian David Anderson presents new findings so extraordinary that they promise not only to redefine our understanding of the brutal war between the colonial government and the insurrectionist Mau Mau but also to reveal our historical dishonesty in failing to distinguish between terrorists and political insurgents.

A riveting account of the British experience in colonial Kenya, Histories of the Hanged begins much earlier than the actual hostilities, which decimated Kenya between 1952 and 1960. Explaining how thousands of British settlers began displacing native Kenyans as early as 1900, Anderson reveals how the British appropriated the most fertile Kenyan land at the beginning of the twentieth century, precipitating an exodus of Kenyans to urban areas, where poverty and deep discontent festered, particularly among the Kikuyu people. In the economic depression the followed World War II, the ardent nationalism of the Kikuyu-based Mau Mau attracted new recruits at a revolutionist pace that few could have imagined.

Anderson's astonishing piece of historical detective work reveals how, in the course of suppressing the Mau Mau revolt, Kenya's British rulers were responsible for thousands of unjustifiable killings, for gross abuses of both their own law and the laws of war, and for what are probably the most brutal episodes of legal and physical oppression in twentieth-century imperial history. In uncovering thousands of new files and court transcripts, Anderson reveals that the British, with the knowledge of both Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan, committed untold atrocities against Kenyan subjects, putting over 70,000 people in prison camps and sending hundreds to the gallows without proper trial.

Uncovering the scanty evidence against the defendants, and the methods of torture by which the British extracted many of their confessions, Histories of the Hanged presents the infamous Mau Mau trials, the most perfunctory and shamefully brutal legal proceedings carried out anywhere in Britain's sprawling empire. And while the perception in the West was of the Mau Mau as bloodthirsty terrorists, intent on slaughtering innocent white civilians and harmless children, the truth is that the Kikuyu rebels killed only thirty-two white colonists and that the real aggressors in this "dirty war" were the high-ranking members of the British government.

Histories of the Hanged is a brilliantly told and deeply shocking story. eyewitness testimonies put the imperial British government on trial, and the secret history of the Mau Mau revolt is revealed in official and intelligence reports, interviews, and the personal stories of governors, guerrilla fighters, and victims. Appearing at a critical juncture in early twenty-first-century history, Histories of the Hanged may be more timely than we previously thought.
Format:
Pages:
pages
Publication:
Publisher:
Edition:
Reprint
Language:
eng
ISBN10:
039332754X
ISBN13:
9780393327540
kindle Asin:
B004LP1Z9A

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