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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Constructing the Colonial Myth of Mau Mau
Author:Kennedy, DaneISNI
Year:1992
Periodical:International Journal of African Historical Studies
Volume:25
Issue:2
Pages:241-260
Language:English
Geographic terms:Kenya
Great Britain
Subjects:colonialism
Mau Mau
Ethnic and Race Relations
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
History and Exploration
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/219387
Abstract:This essay examines the circumstances that brought the earliest and most potent political myth of Mau Mau into being - the highly influential colonialist view of the Gikuyu revolt as a pathological reaction to the pressures of modernization. Although this myth is commonly regarded as the product of a racially extremist European colonial community united in its determination to defend white supremacy, the author suggests that its lines of descent can be traced to a liberal paternalist wing of European opinion that had a very different agenda. While sharing the determination to see Mau Mau crushed, this element sought to cast the revolt in terms that opened rather than closed the gates of change by treating it as a paroxysm of progress, a symptom of earlier failures to monitor the pressures of modernization and release them through measured acts of reform. The power of this interpretation derived from its appreciation that a critical juncture in the transformation of Kenya was at hand. By discrediting Mau Mau without defending the status quo, it served the purposes of those who cautiously charted the colony's course through the shoals of decolonization. Notes, ref.
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