Imperial Reckoning

The Untold Story of the End of Empire in Kenya

Browse Return to Previous Page       Related Subjects African History African Studies All Subjects British & Irish History History

by Caroline Elkins

Henry Holt and Co.

Due/Published January 2005, 496 pages, cloth

ISBN 0805076530

As part of the Allied forces, thousands of Kenyans fought alongside the British in World War II. But just a few years after the defeat of Hitler, the British colonial government detained nearly the entire population of Kenya's largest ethnic minority, the Kikuyu-some one and a half million people.

The story of the system of prisons and work camps where thousands met their deaths has remained largely untold--the victim of a determined effort by the British to destroy all official records of their attempts to stop the Mau Mau uprising, the Kikuyu people's ultimately successful bid for Kenyan independence.

Caroline Elkins, an assistant professor of history at Harvard University, spent a decade in London, Nairobi, and the Kenyan countryside interviewing hundreds of Kikuyu men and women who survived the British camps, as well as the British and African loyalists who detained them.