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Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005. Pp. 476. $27.50/$17.00.
Mau Mau was a violent and bloody response by portions of the Kikuyu population in Kenya towards injustices they suffered under British colonial rule. Just as Mau Mau itself has been little understood, Britain's equally brutal response has remained veiled and largely forgotten since the 1950s. In 2005, Caroline Elkins's Imperial Reckoning and David Anderson's Histories of the Hanged provided potent antidotes to historical amnesia in Britain and Kenya concerning Britain's response to Mau Mau and provoked widespread debate amongst scholars and politicians. While Anderson explored legally suspect trials and executions of suspected Mau Mau insurgents, Elkins focused on the violent and inhuman treatment of detainees in detention camns and Emergency villages. Her research inspired a documentary by the BBC in 2002, and her book won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction in 2006.
Elkins is at her best when she traces the development of Britain's rehabilitation program and detention system. The British colonial propaganda machine portrayed Mau Mau insurgents as savages. Most...