scholarly journals THE ENEMY WITHIN: LOYALISTS AND THE WAR AGAINST MAU MAU IN KENYA

2007 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL BRANCH
Keyword(s):  
Mau Mau ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Colonial Government

ABSTRACTBetween 1952 and 1960, the British colonial government of Kenya waged a violent counter-insurgency campaign against the Mau Mau rebels. In this effort the regime was assisted by collaborators, known as loyalists, drawn from the same communities as the insurgents. Based primarily on new archival sources, this article sets out the history of loyalism, stresses the ambiguity of allegiances during the conflict and argues that loyalism was a product of the same intellectual debates that had spawned the Mau Mau insurgency. The article concludes by stressing the significance for postcolonial Kenya of this history.

‘Natural Justice, Equity and Good Conscience’: History, Politics and Law in Nigeria, 1900–1966

2019 ◽  
pp. 12-25
Author(s):  
Katherine Isobel Baxter
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Natural Justice ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Good Conscience ◽  
Politics And Law ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Indirect Rule

Chapter One provides an account of the history of colonial and postcolonial Nigeria, focusing particularly on politics and law. The chapter recounts the long history of British colonial presence in West Africa and explains the introduction of indirect rule as a system of colonial government from the turn of the century. Some of the impacts of indirect rule are considered through reference to Obafemi Awolowo’s memoir, Awo, and Chinua Achebe’s novel, Arrow of God. The chapter also sketches out the divisions that indirect rule fomented and the resistance to which it gave rise. Finally, the chapter explains the implications of indirect rule for the implementation of law in Nigeria both during colonial rule and following independence.

Sati

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Brick
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Self Immolation ◽  
Colonial Government

This chapter examines the history of the traditional Hindu practice of widow self-immolation, commonly known as sati, which is one of the mostly widely known and discussed forms of ritual suicide in world religions. The chapter begins by briefly placing sati within the context of other historically practiced forms of “following into death” (in German, Totenfolge), and discussing those features of sati that make it unique among these practices. Then, in three separate sections, it provides an account of the earliest surviving sources on sati, which likely date as far back as the fourth century BCE; outlines an important medieval debate on the validity of the practice that took place within the orthodox Hindu legal tradition known as Dharmaśāstra; and, lastly, notes some major later developments regarding sati, including especially its legal prohibition by the British colonial government in India in 1829.

scholarly journals The Brunei Constitution of 1959

2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-125
Author(s):  
Irene Langran
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Background Information ◽  
Brunei Darussalam ◽  
Power Base ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Provide Background Information

For many countries, the twentieth century was characterized by the shift from colonialism to independence. This struggle was contentious and often violent; the resulting governments frequently reflected the tensions between nationalist and colonial influences. In The Brunei Constitution of 1959: An Inside History, B. A. Hussainmiya examines the formation of the framework for the nonviolent and gradual movement toward independence through the negotiations surrounding the 1959 constitution.A historian, Hussainmiya's previous works include his 1995 publication, Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien III and Britain: The Making of Brunei Darussalam. The Brunei Constitution of 1959 began as a series of articles written for the Borneo Bul letin in 1999. This concise history of the 1959 Constitution is divided into eight chapters. The first two chapters provide background information, while chapters three to seven cover the negotiations between the British colonial government and Brunei's monarchy. In chapter eight, the book ends with the constitution's actual promulgation. Britain's relationship with Brunei began in 1847, when the two coun­tries signed a treaty of peace and friendship. In 1888 Britain established a protectorate over Brunei, which grew to residency rule by 1906. Although the establishment of residency rule in 1906 afforded the British vast and unspecified powers, a role for the Malay monarchy, through the sultan, was preserved and, in some respects, augmented. By designating, at least in the­ory, the sultan as the "absolute sovereign," the British hoped to maintain the perception that Brunei was not a colony. As Hussainmiya notes, the British also increased the sultan's power over local nobles in an effort to increase their own power base ...

scholarly journals Architecture of Denial: Imperial Violence, the Construction of Law and Historical Knowledge during the Mau Mau Uprising, 1952–1960

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Juliana Appiah ◽  
Roland Mireku Yeboah ◽  
Akosua Asah-Asante
Keyword(s):  
Class Action ◽  
Legal Responsibility ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
Discursive Space ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Mau Mau ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Systemic Violence ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Colonial Government

Abstract In 2013, the UK government settled a class action suit, which alleged that the British Colonial Government had subjected Kenyans to detainment, ill treatment and torture during the 1952–1960 ‘Kenya Emergency’. During the trial proceedings, the efforts of three expert historical witnesses for the prosecution – Caroline Elkins, David Anderson and Huw Bennett – led to the discovery of a cache of over 8,000 historical files from 36 former British colonies. The material contained within these documents suggested not only that Britain was aware of pervasive human rights abuses occurring throughout Kenya during the Emergency, but that the use of such violence was in fact endorsed and systematically regulated at the highest levels of the colonial administration. Drawing on Foucault’s conception of historical archives as ‘systems of discursivity’, and making use of the testimonies of the three experts, this article explores how the British Colonial Administration was able to dominate the discursive space surrounding Kenyan law and Mau Mau identity, allowing it both to justify the implementation of systemic violence throughout the Emergency, and to evade legal responsibility for these abuses at the time, and for decades afterward.

scholarly journals A Selected Fiction? Lawrence Durrell and the Overgrown Typescript of Bitter Lemons

2017 ◽  
pp. 82
Author(s):  
David Roessel
Keyword(s):  
Public Information ◽  
The Public ◽  
Publication History ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Lawrence Durrell ◽  
Colonial Government

This article looks at previously unmined archival documents in order to explore the preand post-publication history of Lawrence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons, a travelogue written during the ‘emergency years’ of the EOKA campaign against British rule and for union with Greece. It examines the ways in which paratextual documents surrounding this publication history illuminate the awkward, sometimes contradictory, relationship between Durrell’s book and the last years of the British colonial government in Cyprus, a government for which Durrell worked as an employee in the Public Information Office.

Mau-Mau Rebels’ Doctor in Mount Kenya East Forest (1952–1960): Retrieving the Revolutionary History of Milton Munene Gachau

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julius M. Gathogo
Keyword(s):  
National Level ◽  
Medical Doctor ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Revolutionary Movement ◽  
Armed Struggle ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Mau Mau ◽  
History Of ◽  
Revolutionary History ◽  
Second World

The Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), otherwise known as Mau-Mau revolutionary movement was formed after returnees of the Second World War (1939–1945) ignited the African populace to militarily fight for land and freedom (wiyathi nai thaka). John Walton’s theory of reluctant rebels informs this article theoretically, as it is indeed the political elites who inspired this armed struggle. To do this, they held several meetings in the capital city of Nairobi, drew the war structures from the national level to the sub-location level, especially in the central region of Kenya, and tasked locals with filling in the leadership vacuums that were created. In view of this, the article seeks to unveil the revolutionary history of the Mau-Mau medical Doctor, also known as Major Judge Munene Gachau (born in 1935), whose contribution in the Kenyan war of independence (1952–1960) remains unique. This uniqueness can be attested to by considering various factors. First, he is one of the few surviving leaders who joined the guerrilla forest war while he was relatively young. Normally, the Mau-Mau War Council did not encourage people below the age of 25 to join the rebels in the forest of Mt. Kenya, Aberdare Mountains and/or other places. Nor did they encourage adults past the age of 35 to join as combatants in the forest fight. Second, he is the only known Mau-Mau rebel in Kirinyaga county of Kenya to have gone back to school after the war had ended, traveled abroad, and studied up to a Masters degree level. Third, Munene Gachau belongs in the category that joined the rebels while still relatively educated and eventually got promoted to the rank of Major, upon being confirmed as the Mau-Mau Doctor.

scholarly journals The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630–1865

2020 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 631-636
Author(s):  
Noam Maggor
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
British Empire ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Regional Autonomy ◽  
Atlantic Trade ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
City State ◽  
The City ◽  
American Nation

Mark Peterson's The City-State of Boston is a formidable work of history—prodigiously researched, lucidly written, immense in scope, and yet scrupulously detailed. A meticulous history of New England over more than two centuries, the book argues that Boston and its hinterland emerged as a city-state, a “self-governing republic” that was committed first and foremost to its own regional autonomy (p. 6). Rather than as a British colonial outpost or the birthplace of the American Revolution—the site of a nationalist struggle for independence—the book recovers Boston's long-lost tradition as a “polity in its own right,” a fervently independent hub of Atlantic trade whose true identity placed it in tension with the overtures of both the British Empire and, later, the American nation-state (p. 631).

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