Mau Mau From Below: Eastern African Studies

by Greet Kershaw, John Lonsdale

Overview

John Lonsdale says in his introduction:

"This is the oral evidence of the Kikuyu villagers with whom Greet Kershaw lived as an aid worker during the Mau Mau 'Emergency' in the 1950s, and which is now totally irrecoverable in any form save in her own field notes.

Professor Kershaw has uncovered long local histories of social tension which could have been revealed by no other means than patient enquiry, of both her neighbour's memory and government archives...

Nobody, whether Kikuyu participant, Kenyan or European scholar, has provided such startlingly authoritative ethnographic insights into the values, fears and expectations of Kikuyu society and thus of the motivation of Kikuyu action...

Her data suggests, as other scholars have also accepted, that there never was a single such movement and that none of its members, even those who supposed themselves to be its leaders, ever saw it whole, not because they did not have a political aim, but because that agenda was contested within different political circles over which they had no control and of which they may scarcely have had any knowledge.

And why is this finding important? It is because others, including almost all the movement's enemies, did see Mau Mau whole in order to try to comprehend it, a first step towards defeating it."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780821411551
Publisher:	Ohio University Press
Publication date:	04/30/1997
Series:	Eastern African Studies
Edition description:	1
Pages:	383
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Greet Kershaw was formerly a professor of anthropology at California State University, Long Beach.

Editorial Reviews

... a unique account of Britain's most bloody war of decolonization... .More than any other writer on Mau Mau, Kershaw has captured and distilled its internecine complexity, in the process identifying why the wounds have taken so very long to heal... - David Anderson in THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT ... This is a wonderful source book on Kikuyu political mythology and culture... - Frank Furedi in AFRICAN AFFAIRS ... Hers was unique, very difficult, even somewhat dangerous fieldwork and we are fortunate that her findings are at last available. As the distinguished historian of East Africa, John Lonsdale, argues in his excellent foreword, this is an invaluable document that no one interested in the history of East Africa can neglect. Here is an example of anthropological fieldwork that due to its late appearance is now itself a form of history. The copious detail of its material, the complex sagas related by the people in the two Kikuyu communities Kershaw studied, and, above all, the direct voices of these Kikuyus' testimonies and interviews make the harsh and tragic conditions of Kenya life in the colonial era intensely, richly vivid. ... (the) value of her work remains immense, especially since no comparable data of such richness can now ever be retrieved from anywhere else. ... - T.O. Beidelman in ANTHROPOS

From the Publisher