Question 1
Evaluate the interpretations in both of the two passages and explain which you think is more
convincing as an explanation of the causes of the Mau Mau rebellion.
Passage A
Evidently a loose amalgam of evicted squatters, deprived farmers and urban poor, it seemed to be part Kikuyu conspiracy, part peasant revolt and part criminal gang. According to one African, Mau Mau was nothing but ‘a hunger of land in Kenya’. A white official described it as a form of uprising of the unemployed and landless Kikuyu. Anyway, bound together by dark rituals, it espoused revolutionary terror. As such it was banned in 1950. It was certainly foolish, from the colonial standpoint, to sustain the view that the Mau Mau had genuine grievances. Ironically it was the declaration of a state of emergency that created the emergency, for it turned the Mau Mau from a scattered jacquerie* into a guerilla army. Baring acted harshly from the start, hoping to destroy the ‘hydra’** at a stroke. As well as decapitating the KAU and rounding up scores of the best educated nationalists, he paraded Lancashire Fusiliers through the slums of Nairobi. In a hundred mile arc north of the capital the authorities detained and interrogated tens of thousands of Kikuyu. They also herded thousands of squatters from the White Highlands back to the reserves, many via squalid transit camps, depriving them of homes, possessions and livestock. This vast piece of social engineering swelled the ranks of the Mau Mau. They began to organise and retaliate, killing the first white settler in October 1952. The British maintained that, far from being a national liberation movement, it was an obscene reversion to savagery. Kenyatta was its evil genius. Its witch doctors practised perverted forms of black magic.
* Jaquerie – an easily suppressed peasant uprising ** Hydra – a hydra is a mythical many-headed monster
Adapted from: Piers Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1871–1997 published in 2008.
Passage B
Instead of development, immediately after the war there were shortages, unemployment and inflation in many colonies, such as Kenya, leading to strikes and protests. When attempts were made, for example, to develop agriculture, this often involved unacceptable interference with traditional practices by agricultural officers. The government believed that such measures would solve the Kikuyu’s claim to the land farmed by white settlers. British attempts to create large federations aroused nationalist feelings and fears – part of the motivation for the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya was the proposal for a union of Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika in an East African Federation. Given the example of the Central African Federation, this did not appeal to their black populations. In Kenya, urban unemployment and housing shortages combined with rural grievances about the new development of agriculture, leading to disturbances and the creation of the underground Mau Mau movement, which was violently resisting British rule by the end of 1952 – though in fact most of its victims were Kikuyu. It was a war fought between those who had adopted western ideas or had benefited from colonial rule and those who believed it must be resisted in every way. Britain responded with force, declaring an emergency and eventually suppressing the Mau Mau by the end of 1956.
Adapted from: Institute of Contemporary British History University of London, Britain 1914–2000 published in 2000.
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