Unhappy Valley, Book Two: Conflict in Kenya & Africa / Edition 1

by Bruce Berman, John Lonsdale

Overview

This long-awaited book is a considerable revision in the understanding of the history of colonial Kenya and, more widely, colonialism in Africa. There is a substantial amount of new work and this is interlocked with shared areas of concern that the authors have been exploring since 1976.

The authors investigate major themes. These include the conquest origins and subsequent development of the colonial state, the contradictory social forces that articulated African societies to European capitalism, and the creation of new political communities and changing meanings of ethnicity in Africa, in the context of social differentiation and class formation. There is substantial new work on the problems of Mau Mau and of wealth, poverty and civic virtue in Kikuyu political thought.

The authors make a fresh contribution to a deeper historical understanding of the development of contemporary Kenyan society and, in particular, of the British and Kukuyu origins of Mau Mau and the emergency of the 1950s.

They also highlight some of the shortcomings of ideas about development, explore the limitations of narrowly structuralist Marxist theory of the state, and reflect on the role of history in the future of Africa.

Book Two on Violence and Ethnicity gives new insights into popular consciousness, into revolutionary change and into the subtle realities of ethnicity; it will be of particular value to readers of Ngugi.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780821410257
Publisher:	Ohio University Press
Publication date:	04/01/1992
Series:	Eastern African Studies
Edition description:	1
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	(w) x (h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Bruce Berman is a professor of political studies at Queen's University, Ontario.

John Lonsdale is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Table of Contents

	Maps	ix
	Acknowledgements	x
	Preface	xi
	Glossary	xiii
Book 1	State & Class
1	Introduction: An Encounter in Unhappy Valley	1
Part I	Conquest	11
2	The Conquest State of Kenya, 1895-1905	13
	Conquest: the investment of force	15
	The highlanders of Kenya	19
State-building 1	The politics of conquest	21
State-building 2	The politics of control	31
	State formation: the vulgarization of power	36
	Notes	39
3	The Politics of Conquest in Western Kenya, 1894-1908	45
	Notes	72
Part II	Contradictions & the Development of the Colonial State	75
4	Coping with the Contradictions: The Development of the Colonial State, 1895-1914	77
	The colonial state and the articulation of modes of production in the world system	78
	Our foundations in Kenya's historiography	82
	Peasant production and the foundations of political control	84
	Private capital, settlers and the state	88
	African labour and the contradiction between estate and peasant production	91
	Conclusions: the centrality of the state in the political economy of colonialism	94
	Notes	95
5	Crises of Accumulation, Coercion & the Colonial State: The Development of the Labour Control System, 1919-29	101
	Introduction: explaining the form of the colonial state (1990)	101
	Settler production, state coercion and African labour	104
	Notes	122
Part III	Capitalism & the Colonial State in Theoretical & Comparative Perspective	127
6	The Concept of 'Articulation' & the Political Economy of Colonialism	129
	Notes	138
7	Structure & Process in the Bureaucratic States of Colonial Africa	140
	Introduction	140
	The colonial state as an agency of economic change: articulation and accumulation	145
	The colonial state as an agency of political domination	151
	Conclusion: centralization, development and the decline of the colonial state	163
	Notes	167
Part IV	Pasts and Futures	177
8	Up From Structuralism	179
	Dependency theory and the temptations of structuralism	179
	From systemic categories to historical processes: the colonial state as the product/determinant of contradiction and struggle	185
	Beyond the limits of structuralism: culture, ideology and historical experience	198
	Notes	201
9	African Pasts in Africa's Future	203
	Notes	219
	Index to Books One and Two (In Book One only)
Book 2	Violence & Ethnicity
Part V	Unhappy Valley: The State, Mau Mau & the Path to Violence	225
10	Bureaucracy and Incumbent Violence: Colonial Administration and the Origins of the 'Mau Mau' Emergency	227
	The Kenya Administration: discretion and rigidity	230
	The administrator and African politics: protecting the 'man in the blanket' from the 'man in trousers'	237
	Economic growth and the crisis of colonial administration	242
	The Provincial Administration and the KAU: the escalating conflict	248
	Incumbent authorities and collective violence	252
	Notes	257
11	The Moral Economy of Mau Mau: The Problem	265
	Purpose	265
	Problem	269
	Historiography	282
	Notes	303
12	The Moral Economy of Mau Mau: Wealth, Poverty & Civic Virtue in Kikuyu Political Thought	315
	Argument	315
	Evidence	317
	Imperialism and nationalism	322
	Nation and tribe	326
	Tribe and class	350
	Religion and politics	367
	Terror	401
	Past, present and future	461
	Notes	468
	Index	i

Editorial Reviews

Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and in Africa is a must-read for all concerned with issues of colonization, dependency, and state building, as well as the nature and achievements of African resistance.”

— Kinuthia Macharia, Modern African Studies


“There are some truly excellent ideas presented in Unhappy Valley, especially those relating to the definition of ethnicity and the process that creates the colonial state…this work makes a significant contribution to our understanding of Kenyan history. More importantly, we are presented with new ways of examining African history which further the process of understanding and debate.”

— African Studies Review

From the Publisher