Imperial reckoning : the untold story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya

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Title:

Author:

Elkins, Caroline.

ISBN:

9780805076530

Personal Author:

Elkins, Caroline.

Edition:

1st ed.

Publication Information:

New York : H. Holt, 2005.

Physical Description:

xvi, 475 p. : ill., maps ; 25 cm.

Contents:

1. Pax Britannica -- 2. Britain's assault on Mau Mau -- 3. Screening -- 4. Rehabilitation -- 5. The birth of Britain's gulag -- 6. The world behind the wire -- 7. The hard core -- 8. Domestic terror -- 9. Outrage, suppression, and silence -- 10. Detention exposed -- App. The operating pipeline circa January 1956.

Abstract:

"Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has recovered the lost history of the last days of British colonialism in Kenya. In a narrative that draws upon nearly a decade of research - including hundreds of interviews with Kikuyu detention camp survivors and their captors - Elkins reveals for the first time what Britain so desperately tried to hide. In the aftermath of World War II and the triumph of liberal democracy over fascism, the British detained nearly the entire Kikuyu population - some one and a half million people - for more than eight years. Inside detention camps and barbed-wire villages, the Kikuyu lived in a world of fear, hunger, and death. Their only hope for survival was a full denunciation of their anti-British beliefs."--BOOK JACKET.

Subject Term:

Kikuyu (African people) -- History -- 20th century.

Prisons -- Kenya -- History -- 20th century.

Political prisoners -- Kenya -- History -- 20th century.

Geographic Term:

Kenya -- History -- Mau Mau Emergency, 1952-1960 -- Prisoners and prisons, British.

Electronic Access:

Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/bios/hol059/2004053961.html
Sample text http://www.loc.gov/catdir/samples/hol051/2004053961.html

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168020386286	967.6203 E42.I 2005	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

A major work of history that for the first time reveals the violence and terror at the heart of Britain's civilizing mission in Kenya As part of the Allied forces, thousands of Kenyans fought alongside the British in World War II. But just a few years after the defeat of Hitler, the British colonial government detained nearly the entire population of Kenya's largest ethnic minority, the Kikuyu-some one and a half million people.The compelling story of the system of prisons and work camps where thousands met their deaths has remained largely untold-the victim of a determined effort by the British to destroy all official records of their attempts to stop the Mau Mau uprising, the Kikuyu people's ultimately successful bid for Kenyan independence.Caroline Elkins, an assistant professor of history at Harvard University, spent a decade in London, Nairobi, and the Kenyan countryside interviewing hundreds of Kikuyu men and women who survived the British camps, as well as the British and African loyalists who detained them.The result is an unforgettable account of the unraveling of the British colonial empire in Kenya-a pivotal moment in twentieth- century history with chilling parallels to America's own imperial project. Imperial Reckoning is the winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction.