Imperial Reckoning
Caroline
Elkins is a professor of history and African and African American Studies at
Harvard University. Her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya is
a sober recounting of Britain’s attempt at imperialism in Kenya. Not just a
British-version of colonialism in Kenya, what sets this book apart from
accepted histories of colonialism in Kenya is Elkins’ attention to the Kikuyu
version of Mau Mau.
Imperial Reckoning presents the Mau Mau rebellion from the point
of view of the Kikuyu and explores the atrocities they faced during the
uprising. The Mau Mau rebellion is normally presented as a brutal and savage perpetrated
by the Kikuyu. The Kikuyu did commit their share of violent crimes on British
colonials living in Kenya. This, coupled with their refusal to disavow Mau Mau
oaths while under detainment have been used as evidence of Kikuyu savagery.
However, Elkins asks readers to reconsider this assumption and examine evidence
against the numerous atrocities committed by colonial forces.
Elkins
lays the foundation for the uprising by examining land in Kenya. For the
Kikuyu, land was fundamental to being Kikuyu (14). Given the British’s imperial
habits in other parts of the world, land was fundamental to empire. In Kenya,
the British saw an African population for labor, and land that would meet their
needs for imperialism (15). Elkins explains the social hierarchy that emerged
in Kenya: landed British colonialists at the top, African tribal chiefs
somewhere in the middle, and landless African laborers at the bottom. The
Kikuyu had previously been a stateless society, governed by councils of elders
and lineage heads (18). The Kikuyu had previously used the land to meet their
needs without restriction. Elkins argues that the colonization of Kenya took
place to exploit the country’s natural resources and labor (55). In time, the
Kikuyu, under the influence of London-educated Kenyan native Jomo Kenyattta,
would foment a rebellion known as Mau Mau.
As the rebellion
unfolded, the governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, and colonial official
Thomas Askwith devised methods of detainment and rehabilitation to quell Mau
Mau. Elkins lists many administrative and governmental measures taken to punish
the Kikuyu: repressive laws, taxation, imprisonment, legal floggings, and
terror. For Baring’s part, his State of Emergency produced communal punishment,
curfews, control of mass and individual movements of people, confiscation of
land and property, censorship and banning of publications, disbanding of all African
political organizations, control of labor, suspension of due process, and
detention without trial.
Straying from the
traditional argument that the Kikuyu were the brutal party, Elkins describes
the manners in which Mau Mau suspects were subjected to upon intake and
detention. During the initial screening process, suspects would be interrogated
in order to elicit information and confess Mau Mau affiliations (63). There
were two outcomes for the Kikuyu after this screening process. The first would
be deportation to Kikuyu reserves, which was territory set aside especially for
the Kikuyu people, but land that could not agriculturally sustain the enormous
numbers of Kikuyu sent there. The second outcome of screening was deportation
to a detention camp. These camps were used for the Kikuyu who refused to
confess Mau Mau oaths or affiliations.
It is generally at this
part of Imperial Reckoning where
Elkins upholds her thesis and begins her assault on the “paternalism” of the
British in Kenya. She begins to explain in severe detail the conditions in the
Kikuyu reserves and detention camps. Kikuyu would be subjected to extreme
humiliation upon arrival at detention camps. Strip searches, sanitation dips,
and brutal beatings greeted the Kikuyu (134). In addition, the British supposed
Africans had lower health and sanitation standards, permitting disease to run
rampant (143). Several compounds held the designation as the place where “hard
core” Kikuyu would be sent. There, Kikuyu were met with intense pain and
degradation as the foundation of camp life (156). The vituperation experienced
by detainees is incredibly unimaginable.
I
think Elkins provides an interesting and normally silent account of life in the
detention camps of Kenya. Despite the terror of camp life, the detainees
created their own social world and rules to survive their detention. Survival
and resistance strategies abounded. For instance, in order to speak without
subjecting themselves to beatings, some Kikuyu would feign mental illness and
pretend to speak to the wall or yell incoherently. It was only the Kikuyu who
could understand, thus undermining the constant control they were normally
subjected to while in the cruelty camps.
Elkins
examines the rehabilitation methods as put forth by Askwith. Under Askwith’s rehabilitation
plan, detainees would be offered domestic and agricultural classes, education,
and other skills that would ease assimilation into British society. After
intense research, Elkins was able to find little if any evidence of
rehabilitation taking place in detention camps. When British officials were
questioned about the rehabilitation process, they would either lie or
completely fabricate rehabilitation measures. I think that it is in the realm
of rehabilitation measures that the British erringly regard their imperialist actions
as to the benefit of Kikuyu society. However, from the Kikuyu point of view
rehabilitation was non-existent.
As
detention camps came to represent unimaginable repression and brutality for the
Kikuyu, Governor Baring instituted a new policy of villagization. The goal of
villagization was to contain, control, and discipline Mau Mau women (240). British
colonialists considered Kikuyu women the foundation of Africa. Women faced
forced communal labor, public terror, torture, and malnutrition. Many women
also had the responsibility of caring for and providing for children. Elkins
describes villagization as detention camps in all but name. These villages were
surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. Villagization served to disrupt the
supply line between women and the remaining forest fighters, thus helping to
root out Mau Mau (250).
The
most brutal detention camps were reserved for hard-core male Mau Mau suspects. These
men experienced a form of violent and systematic brutality officially
sanctioned by Governor Baring (328). Under the tutelage of district officer
Terrance Gavaghan, Kikuyu men were under a perpetual atmosphere of fear and
uncertainty that intended to break them of their Mau Mau support (244).
Gavaghan’s compound, Mwea, was the site of indescribable sexual and physical
abuse, public torture, and violence. After reading Imperial Reckoning, it is hard to imagine any other perspective of
Mau Mau that could be believably brought forth other than inhumane violence.
Elkins convincingly argues and provides evidence that British colonial leaders
repeatedly “obfuscated the facts, skirted the issues, and lied” about the
procedures taking place in detention camps (332).
Interestingly,
Elkins points to Jomo Kenyatta as being implicitly complicit in the cover up of
British brutality in Kenya. Kenyatta refused to speak of the past horrors that
Mau Mau suspects survived. Elkins argues that Kenyatta sacrificed the past
Kenya for the future Kenya. Mau Mau men, women, and children have never been
memorialized. No African loyalist or British official was prosecuted (360).
Part
of what makes Imperial Reckoning so
clarifying for history, is Elkins’ use of sources to formulate and construct
her narrative. Not satisfied with the limited British sources, Elkins conducted
oral testimonies of not just Kikuyu who lived through the Mau Mau rebellion,
but also the interviews of British officials complicit in the adherence to
colonial policy in response to the uprising (374). Elkins admittedly struggled
with the believability of the Mau Mau suspects’ harrowing ordeals in camps and
on the reserves. However, she was struck with the consistency of oral
testimonies over time and space. Elkins was also able to corroborate the oral
data with what little did survive in the written record after the British
denial and cover-up.
British
imperialism operated under a cloak of protective civilization. I think this
book, better than any other this semester, demonstrates how the British
continually justified imperialism by holding on to paternalism. The British
believed they had a duty and moral obligation to redeem the heathens of the
world (5). Elkins found little evidence of the British in Kenya as
paternalistic reformers. Imperial
Reckoning serves as evidence of the British’s brutality. The author’s
investigative skills are impressive. Despite the British’s attempts to cover-up
notorious atrocities, Elkins presents a view from the Kikuyu side. In the end,
the British won the long, hard war against Mau Mau, but lost the war for Kenya
(353).
