Nationalism in Kenya 1945–1965 

Key issues

• Reasons for rise of Nationalism;
• Mau Mau rebellion: causes, nature of, impact; problem of settlers and the Indian population; importance of Kenyatta;
• changing British policy towards Kenya especially Macmillan;
• reasons for and nature of final independence settlement, impact of, and on, international context e.g. Cold War, Commonwealth.

Also see Key topic 2 Session: Nationalism

A key issue in Kenya under British rule was the conflict over land ownership between local population (such as Maasai and Gikuyu) and white settlers. Under colonial legislation, land became private property reserved for white settlers, and local groups were forced to become 'squatters' on their own land. This is particularly true in central-northern highland - the 'White Highland' monopolised by Europeans land owners but meanwhile, the traditional home for the Gikuyu, who became the major force in the forthcomign Mau Mau movement.
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Another impact of colonial rule was it exacerbated class differences within the Gikuyu community. The well-heeled, mission-educated, land-owning elite emerged as a 'nationalist' force (represented by Jomo Kenyatta). It was paralleled by the rise of a much more turbulent, working-class, semi-unionised movement which was the product of land alienation and rapid urbanisation (chiefly in Nairobi and Mombasa).

After WW2, land alienation, increasing number of 'squatters', and some other conflicts on cultural practice (eg. female circumcision, or FGM) escalated the tension, and the division within African societies further deepened. 

Internet Resources

​Report of the Kenya Land Commission, 1933.

In contract, look at the writing by Jomo Kenyatta, a native Gikuyu, and later the first president of independent Kenya. In Facing Mount Kenya, Kenyatta conducted an anthropological study on Gikuyu culture, including its land tenure system and circumcision practice.

Louis Leakey describes FGM with a culturally relativistic approach in 'Kikuyu Problem of the Initiation of Girl' (1931). Be aware of Leakey's white, male, Christian and privileged background, his work was not a 'voice from below'.

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Indian labourers, traders, and later, middle-class professionals came to Kenya from the end of the 19th century, following British imperial expansion. They were perceived by Africans with hostility as agents of Imperialism, yet prevented from land-owership by white settlers. During the nationalist and Mau Mau movement, there were both solidarity and friction in Afro-Indian relationship. Eventually after independence, Indians were well aware of their 'outsiders' status and began exodus from the late 1960s.
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Internet Resources
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• An African History of the Global Indian (The Wire).
• More Kenya Asians flee to Britain (BBC on this day, 4 Feburary 1968).

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Internet Resources

The Mau Mau movement

• Teaching Africa – teaching kit from Boston University: The Mau Mau Rebellion.
• SA History: Mau Mau Uprising.
• BBC. The Story of Africa- Independence case study of Kenya.
• An outline of Kenya under British rule.

Recent researches providing insights to Mau Mau and African decolonisation

• David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 2005.
• Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya, Henry Holt/Jonathan Cape, 2005.
• Ronald Hyam, Britain’s Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonisation, 1918-1968, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006.

Jomo Kenyatta

Kenyatta was a student at LSE in the 1930s and published an anthropological study on Gikuyu community (Facing Mount Kenya, see above). From the late 1940s, he was head of the Kenya African Union (KAU), and seen as a nationalist figurehead. He was never directly involved in Mau Mau -- aspects of it frightened him as much as it did the British.

During the Mau Mau movement, he was detained for much of the 1950s as a preventive action taken by the colonial regime. When the 'wind was changed,' there were intensive debates in the UK government around his release in August 1962: see this and this from the Parliament record.

​After independence, Kenyatta had a nervous, ambivalent relationship with Mau Mau veterans.

Who actually won independence for Kenya? 
A basic debate which has surrounded African decolonisation since the 1960s

• The Mau Mau movement, which was militarily defeated but which nonetheless made the British think twice about holding onto the place? 
• Or the careful negotiations undertaken by supposedly moderate Kenyatta and other members of the African elite in the early 1960s?

Although Hola Camp Massacre 'signalled the moral end of the British Empire in Africa’ (Ronald Hyam, Britain’s Declining Empire), and was a hotly debated issue during the UK General Election (Oct 1959), it did not prevent the Conservative Party, under Macmillan, from taking office for the third term. 
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Internet Resources

​Hola Camp Massacre (1959) 
This blog (from the Imperial and Global Forum) discusses the Hola Camp Massacre as a turning point of the Mau Mau movement.

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However, in 1960, on his tour in Africa, Macmillan openly spoke of the 'wind of change', acknowledging the British rule was over and African people should have the right to govern themselves. 

This was in tandem with other European colonial powers in Africa, who were also undergoing decolonisation. In late 1960, UN Resolution 1514 declared independence for all colonial countries.

The final independence settlement involved the transfer of power to a group of middle-class land-owners (Kenyatta et al) with whom the British felt they had a good relationship.  The issue of land alienation was not resolved (in place of white settlers was an African elite). And indeed, Kenya joins the Commonwealth and becomes a key Cold War ally of the British. Kenya was supposedly a West-leaning, capitalist economy (in contrast to the statist experiments in neighbouring Uganda and Tanzania).

Internet Resources
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A BBC on This Day looks at the 'Wind of Change'.

UN Declaration on the Grant of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (adopted by Resolution 1514).

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Internet Resources

​Legacy:  Mau Mau claims for compensation
In recent years, a group of elderly (and dwindling) Mau Mau detainees launched a legal action against the British government, alleging mistreatment during the 1950s

• William Hague, ‘Statement to Parliament on settlement of Mau Mau claims’, Gov.uk, 6 June 2013.
• ​Leigh Day (a UK-based law firm), ‘The Mau Mau Claims’ and 'Mau Mau case in pictures'.
• 'Mau Mau Judgement,' a special issue of The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Volume 39, 2011, issue 5.
• Guardian, Mau Mau lawsuit due to begin at high court (2016)​​.

​Legacy: ‘Migrated Archives”
'Migrated Archives' (labelled FCO 141) are Foreign and Commonwealth Office documents related to decolonisation in various former British colonies. They were handed over to the National Archives for public access in 2012. Files related to Kenya can be searched here.

Significance of these recently released documents:

• BBC, Mau Mau massacre documents revealed.
• David Anderson: Guilty Secrets: Deceit, Denial, and the Discovery of Kenya’s ‘Migrated Archive’. History Workshop Journal, Volume 80, Issue 1, 1 October 2015, Pages 142–160.

Muhammad Kijumwa, Utenzi wa Ndiwa na Kozi [MS 45022c]. MS 45022 (SOAS manuscript number); MS 45022c (SOAS manuscript number), SOAS Library. © SOAS University of London.

In many ways Kenya is a test case for debates about the nature of empire in the early twenty-first century, highlighting the brutality which underlay the supposed essential benevolence of the British civilising mission.

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Internet Resources
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​Film and radio

• ​BBC Radio 4. “Kenya’s Bloody Summer”. Document series, 28 March 2007.
• British Pathe. Newsreels on Mau Mau Emergency.
• 'The Black Man's Land' Trilogy (White Man’s Country, Mau Mau, Kenyetta), three documentaries filmed in 1970.

Fiction 
​These writers have written extensively about Mau Mau and post-war Kenya

• Charles A. Mangua. Kenyatta’s Jiggers (1994); A Tail in the Mouth (1972); Son of Woman (1971).
• Meja Mwangi. Carcase for Hounds (1974), Going Down River Road (1976). Kill Me Quick (1973). Taste of Death (1975).
• Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Taste of Death (1975); A Grain of Wheat (1968); Petals of Blood (1977); Homecoming (1972); The River Between (1965); Weep Not, Child (1964); Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1976), with M.G. Mugo.

• Robert Ruark. Something of Value (1955); Uhuru (1962).

Newspaper
The Kenya Gazette is an official government publication. This archive collects the weekly publication between 1967-1989.

Archives
Politics and Society in Eastern African, 1800-1989, with links to many primary sources (Warwick University).

Header image: Muhammad Kijumwa, Utenzi wa Ndiwa na Kozi [MS 45022c]. MS 45022 (SOAS manuscript number); MS 45022c (SOAS manuscript number), SOAS Library. © SOAS University of London.