Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya [Hardcover]

For those readers obviously perplexed by the challenging thesis which this book presents, and not least by what several other reviewers suggest is the flimsiness of its documentary evidence, confirmation that Caroline Elkins has largely hit the mark in her critique of British misconduct in the last decades of British rule in Kenya, are confirmed by the recent publication of 8.800 Foreign Office files from former British Colonies, including Kenya. However, complete confirmation, in all its gruesome detail, will never be entirely possible since most of the government papers relevant to Kenya were systematically destroyed in the early 1960s, apparently at the behest of the then Colonial Secretary, Iain Macleod. Even those documents concerning the final years of the British Empire which are now at last to see the light of day have been withheld improperly from public view, but it would appear that a few documents concerning the Mau Mau insurgency have survived among them. Those o Malaya, Aden, and Cyprus are likely to me more forthcoming.

Elkins' book has received many plaudits in America and was awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for non fiction. Regrettably, Elkins' outrage about events in Kenya in the 1950s results in her forsaking academic rigour, since she tells only part of a murky story. This can be shown most clearly be considering aspects of some reviews of the book by other academic historians.

Bethwell Ogot from Moi University in Kenya noted in reviewing Elkins' book that the Mau Mau fighters who were involved in the insurgency against the Colonial Government "Contrary to African customs and values, assaulted old people, women and children. The horrors they practiced included the following: - decapitation and general mutilation of civilians, torture before murder, bodies bound up in sacks and dropped in wells, burning the victims alive, gouging out of eyes, splitting open the stomachs of pregnant women. No war can justify such gruesome actions. In man's inhumanity to man there is no race distinction. The Africans were practising it on themselves. There was no reason and no restraint on both sides, although Elkins sees no atrocities on the part of Mau Mau" (Journal of African History 46, 2005, page 502).

Susan Carruthers from Rutgers University in the USA noted that "In her determination to redress imperial propaganda's stereotypes of Mau Mau savagery, Elkins leans into unintended condescension, lauding the Kikuyu's `sophisticated' appreciation of British hypocrisy. (Why wouldn't those most thoroughly dislocated appreciate the character of European colonialism better than anyone?) Conversely, Elkins' settlers and colonial administrators are cartoonish grotesques: `These privileged men and women lived an absolutely hedonistic lifestyle, filled with sex, drugs, drink and dance, followed by more of the same' " (Twentieth Century British History 16, 2005, page 492).

None of this suggests that events in Kenya during the Mau Mau insurgency were not distinctly unpleasant, to say the least. It does, however, suggest that Elkins has a very sharp axe to grind, and that her book should be interpreted with this orientation clearly in mind. The many plaudits that Elkins' book have received in America possibly tell us much about American attitudes to the British Empire. This is by a limited history of the Mau Mau insurgency.

This is a well written book with lots of material to consider. My main criticism is that, as I read the book, I got the feeling that the first-hand evidence actually presented did not match with the words and language used by the author. Throughout the latter stages of the book are numerous letters from the detainees at the detention camps detailed in the book. Whilst the author paints a picture of thousands of deaths from torture and other abuses, the letters themselves, some from the worst-of-the-worst camps that are frequently compared to Nazi concentration camps, detail 3-5 alledged deaths during interrogation over a 6 month period. Does this really compare to the Nazi concentration camps? Elkins does not explain this seeming mis-match. Perhaps it was due to the language used by the detainees? Perhaps it stems from the files that are missing from the official records? (Maybe it's just my reading of the texts?).

There clearly were a lot of nasty things happening in Kenya (and other countries) towards the end of empire. The trouble with this oversight/oversensationalistion is that the enormous amount of research that Elkins undertook could have perhaps been used more thoroughly to really shed light on exactly what happened. This book doesn't quite do that.