Follow the Author
OK
Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya Paperback – Illustrated, Dec 27 2005
|
Caroline Elkins
(Author)
Find all the books, read about the author and more.
See search results for this author
|
Frequently bought together
Customers who bought this item also bought
No Kindle device required. Download one of the Free Kindle apps to start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, and computer.
-
Apple
-
Android
-
Windows Phone
-
Android
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Product details
- ASIN : 0805080015
- Publisher : Holt Paperbacks; 1st edition (Dec 27 2005)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 496 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1844135489
- ISBN-13 : 978-1844135486
- Item weight : 680 g
- Dimensions : 15.24 x 2.79 x 22.86 cm
-
Best Sellers Rank:
#352,958 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #32 in Kenyan History
- #85 in East African History (Books)
- #352 in 20th Century English History
- Customer Reviews:
Product description
Review
“Caroline Elkins has written an important book that can change our understanding not just of Africa but of ourselves. Through exhaustive research in neglected colonial archives and intrepid reporting among long-forgotten Kikuyu elders in Kenya's Rift Valley, Elkins has documented not just the true scale of a huge and harrowing crime--Britain's ruthless suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion--but also the equally shocking concealment of that crime and the inversion of historical memory.” ―Bill Berkeley, author of The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe and Power in the Heart of Africa
“On the basis of the most painstaking research, Caroline Elkins has starkly illuminated one of the darkest secrets of late British imperialism. She has shown how, even when they profess the most altruistic of intentions, empires can still be brutal in their response to dissent by subject peoples. We all need reminding of that today.” ―Niall Ferguson, Professor of History, Harvard University, and Senior Research Fellow, Jesus College, Oxford; author of Colossus: The Price of America's Empire and Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power
“In the 1950s, Mau Mau provided the Western world with photographic evidence of what Africa and Africans 'were like': savage, bloodthirsty, and in need of British civilization. Imperial Reckoning shows us how these images neglected to show the brutality and savagery being committed against the Kenyan Kikuyu people detained by the British. Caroline Elkins fills out the images, tells the rest of the story, and corrects the record in this masterful book.” ―Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University
“Rarely does a book come along that transforms the world's understanding of a country and its past by bringing to light buried, horrifying truths and redrawing central contours of its image. With voluminous evidence, Caroline Elkins exposes the long suppressed crimes and brutalities that democratic Britain and British settlers willingly perpetrated upon hundreds of thousands of Africans--truths that will permit no one of good faith to continue to accept the mythologized account of Britain's colonial past as merely a 'civilizing mission.' If you want to read one book this year about the catastrophic consequences of racism, about the cruelty of those who dehumanize others, or about the crimes that ideologically besotted people--including from western democratic countries--can self-righteously commit, Imperial Reckoning is that book.” ―Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust and recipient of Germany's Democracy Prize
“Given the number and nature of the atrocities that filled the 20th century, the degree of brutality and violence perpetrated by British settlers, police, army and their African loyalist supporters against the Kikuyu during the Mau Mau period should not be surprising. Nor, perhaps, the fact that the British government turned a blind eye, and later covered them up. What is surprising, however, is that it has taken so long to document the whole ghastly story-this is what makes Caroline Elkins's disturbing and horrifying account so important and memorable.” ―Caroline Moorehead, author of Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees and Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life
“Imperial Reckoning is an incredible piece of historical sleuthing. The author has reconstructed the story that British officialdom almost succeeding in suppressing. Her sources are the Mau Mau fighters and sympathizers whom the British detained in concentration camps during the 1950s. Her interviews with the survivors of this British 'gulag' are a labor of love and courage--impressive in their frankness and deep emotional content as well as properly balanced between men and women, colonial officials and Mau Mau detainees. Caroline Elkins tells a story that would never have made it into the historical record had she not persevered and collected information from the last generation of Mau Mau detainees alive to bear witness to what happened.” ―Robert Tignor, Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, Princeton University
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
“The colonial propaganda machine, once well-oiled, preyed on the detainees` doubts and fears. Pamphlets in the vernacular, pointing out how misguided was the detainees` belief that African land had been stolen by the British, were circulated throughout the compound. At the same time, loudspeakers blared warnings about ongoing land confiscations, describing how land taken from Mau Mau sympathizers was being redistributed to those loyal to the British cause. “Confess and Save Your Land,“ was one public broadcast played throughout the Pipeline, and it is bitterly remembered by many of the former detainees today. So too are photographs of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth in full regalia, which were displayed alongside images of Jomo Kenyatta in shackles, wild-haired and looking rather dazed and pathetic. The contrast between civilization and savagery could not have been more stark.”
More items to explore
The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War -- a Tragedy in Three ActsHardcover
Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956Paperback
Company, The: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay EmpireStephen BownHardcover
GrantPaperback
The March of Folly: From Troy to VietnamBarbara W. TuchmanPaperback
Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global PowerHardcover
Customer reviews
Top reviews from Canada
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Some fairly mind-blowing stuff detailed in this book includes: 1) that OPERATION ANVIL (a military operation) removed virtually all non-loyalist Kikuyu from Nairobi with no warning in 1954, 2) that nearly the entire non-loyalist Kikuyu population found itself either in the gulag pipeline or in newly-built enclosed villages, 3) that routine violence/torture against detainees became officially mandated British policy, 4) that official death count of 11,000 Kikuyu notwithstanding, between 100,000 and 300,000 Kikuyu may have died as a result of the British campaign against the Mau Mau and 5) the the right to practice FGM was a rallying cry for the Kikuyu against the British.
I only subtracted .5 of a start because I found it a little frustrating that the author seems to have assumed some knowledge of the Mau Mau movement on the part of the reader. While the author does a great job outlining the political-economic causes of the Kikuyu's dispossession and discontent, beyond saying that some 90% of Kikuyu took some form of Mau Mau oath, she dedicates only one sentence to defining what the term "Mau Mau" actually means ("a mass peasant movement"), but then at times uses language like "the Mau Mau people" "Mau Mau movement" "profaning the Mau Mau" etc. while at times taking pains to point out the the future Kenyan president Jomo Kenyatta was himself NOT a Mau Mau member - so all of this leaves me feeling like a little bit more time spent discussing, for example, what does the phrase "Mau Mau" actually mean? Was there an organized Mau Mau leadership? What were the Mau Mau fighters/members in the cities and forests actually up to while all of this was going on? would have been illuminating. In any case, a fairly small thing and outside the author's main focus.
As a footnote, interestingly for the reader of 2020, while the comparisons to Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet gulag archipelago are convincingly presented, a new comparison comes to mind: China's interment of Uyghurs in so-called "Vocational Education and Training Camps" - it will be interesting to one day read a definitive account of that period of Chinese history and consider how it measures against the aforementioned examples.
Top reviews from other countries
Unglaublich was die Englaender dort aufgefuehrt haben. Bei meinen zahlreichen England Besuchen wurde ich als Oesterreicher nicht erst einmal abwertend als "Sohn Hitlers" angesprochen. Danke Frau Elkins, dass sie in muehevoller Kleinarbeit - die Englaender haben fast alle Akten vernichtet, bevor sie sich aus Kenya zurueckgezogen hatten - die Geschichte wieder zurechtgebogen haben.
