Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a challenging read, 28 Sep 2005
Anyone who has lived in the U.K. since 1960 will recognise the way in which the phrase Mau-Mau can strike fear in the hearts of children. This book aims not to dispel that myth but to uncover some of the reasoms why the whole story of the British suppression of the Mau-Mau uprising was, and could, never be told. The almost unendurable accounts of torture and brainwashing under the colonial power were the reason for the silence. This material provided the basis of a BBC programme in 2002 at the time when Kenya had just gone through elections which seemed to offer the possibility for the truth to be told at last. It would appear, on the evidence of this book, that claims for compensation are not likely to be forthcoming. Elkins does not seem to have any political agenda ; however she is convinced that the silence which followed Independence was more a result of British tactics of divide and rule than an absence of dissent in the indigenous population. She cites Ngugi as one of the few who dared to question the official line of the Moi regime, for which he was imprisoned. I am constantly reminded of his prophetic line in "From the barrel of a Pen" that the British would only quit their colonies when thay had taught the people how to oppress themselves.
Elkins has produced a monster of a book which will haunt the fainthearted. Somehow i fear that the enormous amount of research which went into it's making may slide, like the terrible truth which it unfolds, into the mists of time because it is too blatant to confront. Anyone who has not read the account of restorative justice in South Africa by Desmond Tutu will perhaps not grasp my point. Ultimately this book asks you to judge for yourself - if you dare.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Sadly, a very subjective view of an important subject, 26 Jun 2008
The topic is significant and of historical importance and whilst this book highlights some of the atrocities that happened during colonial rule it is however very subjective and demonstrates a superficial level of research and understanding of the time and indeed Kenya (past and present). The authors views of the characters involved are very one sided and prejudiced which doesn't allow the context of the topic to be fully appreciated. Where factual information isn't available or hasn't been discovered the book sadly works on the basis of "Assumption X Assumption = Fact"
Its interestingly an "untold" story that has previously been "told" in Anthony Claytons, "The Killing Fields of Kenya 1952-1960, Trans Africa Press, 1976. ISBN 9966-940-37-5, which provides both a more informative, balanced and factual account of events.
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12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Tendentious and biased, 9 Jan 2007
This work is an exemplar of the category of modern history writing that adopts a post-modern distrust of official positions, government documents, etc, and places disproportionate reliance upon the testimonies of former Mau Mau. This is a mistake in itself, as even a cursory survey of memoirs produced by former Mau Mau show themselves to be inaccurate and exaggerated. This is an exercise in historiographical political correctness, following the line that only indigenous people can know and tell the truth of their history (which is simply not true) and misses (or more likely disregards) the point that people so closely involved in an armed struggle are unlikely to recognise or acknowledge the patterns of oppression that they perpetrated themselves.
As a work it reveals little of the immense cruelty and suffering that Mau Mau inflicted upon Kenyan African people, nor the remarkable degree of tenacity that many Africans displayed in resisting Mau Mau. Who is going to pay compensation to the Kenyans who suffered under the Mau Mau terror?
Some commentators in the Kenya press have noted a tendency in Elkins to fall into the rather patronising attitude of depicting Mau Mau as noble savages in her headlong rush to eulogise Mau Mau. This may or may not be the case, but what is undoubtedly the case is that this book is an exercise in unrestrained British bashing. Like many on the American left, she has a particular contempt for the British Empire. This is revealed in the very title of the book, where she tries to draw a comparison and moral equivalence between the British and Stalinist Russia. The use of the word Gulag in the title shows that 1) she knows next to nothing about the gulags (the real ones) and 2) that she has no compunction in employing a lack of scholarly restraint in her language. The tone of the book is simply hysterical.
No-one denies that there were many atrocities committed in Kenya by the security forces; this has always been well known, and was widely reported upon at the time. This is certainly not an "untold" story, but rather a well established narrative rehashed in histrionic terms by Elkins. It is right to deplore security force atrocities, but Elkins does not address the bigger issue of whether or not the general conduct of the British military campaign in the Kenya Emergency was reasonable and commensurate to the threat that Mau Mau posed.
What might have been a more useful exercise would be a comparative study on how counter-insurgency campaigns in the 1950s and 60s - Algeria, Dahomey, Vietnam for example- were conducted by France and America in comparison to the British in Kenya. I suspect that this would reveal that 1) no counter insurgency is clean and noble but that 2) the Kenya Emergency was conducted with relative restraint and with much greater respect for due legal process than might be expected.
There are many scholarly works on the Kenya Emergency, some pro-British, most are pro-Mau Mau, but most make an effort to be balanced. I do not believe that any other major scholarly work on the Mau Mau is as blatantly biased as Elkins.
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