Introductory description

This module is intended to examine a wide variety of sources related to the origins, conduct and memorialisation of Kenya’s Mau Mau war of 1952-60. The sources will reveal the complexity and ambiguities of what was both an anti-colonial rebellion against British rule and a civil war within the colony’s Kikuyu community.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Autumn Term

1. Introductory Session
2. Lectures A & B - Mau Mau: The Legal Case and the Context. Historiography: Mau Maus of the Mind
3. Lectures C & D - The Conquest of Kikuyuland, to 1914. The Colonial Moment in Kikuyuland, 1914-1939
4. The Politics of Reproduction: Generation, Gender and Property
5. The Politics of Labour: Masters and Servants, 1905-1952
6. Reading Week
7. The Politics of Land: Squatters and Olenguruone, 1905-52
8. Towards the State of Emergency 1945-52
9. Emergency Powers and White Highlanders
10. Mau Mau's Land and Freedom Army

Spring Term

1. Creating Kikuyu Loyalists
2. The British Counterinsurgency, 1952-56
3. Winning "Hearts and Minds"
4. Detention and Villagisation
5. Mwea, Hola and the Rule of Law, 1956-59
6. Reading Week
7. Kenya's Politics of Decolonization, 1959-63
8. Interpreting Mau Mau
9. Fiction and Film
10. Dissertation Presentations

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a systematic knowledge and understanding of the place of Mau Mau within the wider history of colonial Africa and the longer histories of British imperialism and Kenyan politics
• Critically analyse and evaluate a broad range of primary sources (including the methodological challenges of archival-based research into colonised societies) relating to the history of the Mau Mau Rebellion
• Effectively communicate ideas, and make informed, coherent and persuasive arguments, relating to the complexity of anti-colonial rebellions
• Critically review and consolidate theoretical, methodological, and historiographical ideas relating to the history of the Mau Mau Rebellion

Indicative reading list

• David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (London, 2005)
• E.S. Atieno Odhiambo & John Lonsdale (eds), Mau Mau and Nationhood: Arms, Authority, Narration (Oxford, 2003)
• Huw Bennett, Fighting the Mau Mau: The British Army and Counter-Insurgency in Kenya (Cambridge, 2012)
• Bruce Berman, Control and Crisis in Colonial Kenya: The Dialectic of Domination (Oxford, 1992)
• Bruce Berman & John Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa (Oxford, 1992)
• Daniel Branch, Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya: Civil War, Counterinsurgency and Decolonization (Cambridge, 2009)
• Caroline Elkins, Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya (London, 2005)
• Frank Furedi, The Mau Mau War in Perspective (Oxford, 1989)
• Tabitha Kanogo, Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau (London, 1987)
• Jomo Kenyatta, Facing Mount Kenya (London, )
• Greet Kershaw, Mau Mau From Below (Oxford, 1997)
• W.O. Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of a Peasant Revolt (Bloomington, 1993)
• Godfrey Muriuki, A History of the Gikuyu (Nairobi, 1974)
• Derek Peterson, Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya (Portsmouth NH, 2004)
• David Sandgren, Mau Mau's Children: The Making of Kenya's Postcolonial Elite (Madison WI, 2012)
• David Throup, Economic and Social Origins of Mau Mau 1945-52 (London, 1988)

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Subject specific skills

See learning outcomes.

Transferable skills

See learning outcomes.