Mau Mau Revolution(Kenya)

MAU MAU REVOLUTION

Introduction

The Mau Mau Revolution also known as the Mau Mau Revolt, Mau Mau Rebellion, Mau Mau Revolution, Mzungu Arudi Ulaya Mwafrika Apate Uhuru and Kenya Emergency was a military conflict that took place in Kenya between 1952 and 1960. It involved Kikuyu-dominated groups summarily called Mau Mau and elements of the British Army, the local Kenya Regiment mostly consisting of the British, auxiliaries and anti-Mau Mau Kikuyu. The capture of rebel leader Dedan Kimathi on 21 October 1956 signalled the ultimate defeat of Mau Mau, and essentially ended the British military campaign.

Mau Mau failed to capture widespread public support, partly due to the British policy of divide and rule, and the movement remained internally divided, despite attempts to unify its various strands. The British, meanwhile, could draw upon their ongoing efforts to put down another rebellion in Malaya.

Kenya before the Emergency.

The primary British interest in Kenya was land, which, observed the British East Africa Commission of 1925, constituted "some of the richest agricultural soils in the world, mostly in districts where the elevation and climate make it possible for Europeans to reside permanently." Though declared a colony in 1920, the formal British colonial presence in Kenya began with a proclamation on 1 July 1895, in which Kenya was claimed as a British protectorate.

Even before 1895, however, Britain's presence in Kenya was marked by dispossession and violence. During the period in which Kenya's interior was being forcibly opened up for British settlement, there was plenty of conflict and British troops did on occasion carry out atrocities against the native population.

The one sided nature of fighting in Kenya led Churchill, in 1908, to express concern about how it would look if word got out:

Kenyan opposition to British imperialism was there from the start—for example, the Kikuyu opposition of 1880–1900—though it bears emphasis that, in military...