No One With Half a Brain Ever Expected the British to Admit Anything They Did was Bad or Evil

books:

	• Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya Caroline Elkins Owl Books, 2005 - 496 pages average customer review:based on 24 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The most important thing about the book is the Time Period!!!!!!!

What I find interested about the text is the time frame. Less than a decade after fight the Nazis, the british empire continued to impose it might against those that fought to liberate the so-called mother country. The author rightfully look at the history by presenting evidence about the British deaths at the hands of the Mau Mau fight for land reclamation which became a fight for national liberation.

What the Brutish fear the Nazis might do to them became a mean in Kenya. I am sure some readers might have an issue with the author presented facts instead of the long held british media frieindly slants that has been the standard for over half a century. It is good to get the views of the oppressed and liberation fighters who lived under british brutish rule.

I thanks the author for writing this book. In fact, the author started her research with a pro-british view and by the end realized that the colonizers were the terrorists.

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Forgotten History

Ms. Elkins does a good job of writing the story of the Mau-Mau rebellion, which was as she puts it a "decolonization war" in Kenya. Largely forgotten today (not least because it was rapidly overshadowed by events in the Congo, Nigeria and Rhodesia) events in Kenya proved to be an extreme challenge to Britain's post-war efforts to retain security in its extensive overseas possessions.

One piece of the puzzle which is largely ignored today is the success the British had in squelching the Mau-Mau. As deplorable as Ms. Elkins found their methods, the British were able to secure the colony against an insurgency. So much for insurgencies always being successful.

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Two wrongs, don't make it right.

I know for a lot of people including myself, the subject matter was horrific. Some people think a lot of these western powers gave a lot more hell than heaven to these places, and some even believe that these policies planted the seeds of a legacy that has and will last many many decades. A uncommon book well worth reading that shows how we're still not quite out of the cave.

No One With Half a Brain Ever Expected the British to Admit Anything They Did was Bad or Evil

The British built an Empire that the world will never see the equal to. On the other hand they did it by exploiting the people and natural resources of more countries than anyone. They only missed out on the US because we wanted to exploit the land (and were better prepare to steal it from the 'Natives') more then did the British.

Though the British Empire eliminated slavery at the beginning of the nineteenth century, they learned how to exploit the 'natives' without having to give them lifetime employment. They also learned how to conquer a nation as they did to the Boers in South Africa.

Except for the beatings and such (yes I know, excuse me) the techniques used in Kenya were very similar to what the British did in South Africa at the beginning of the 20th century. They rounded up all the people who could possibly do anything to assist or feed the 'insurgents', put them in "protective villages" and left them there protected by 'loyalist militia' and surrounded by barbed-wire to die of disease and starvation.

The Kikuyu Loyalists, were as bad or worse than the Vichy Milice, and/or the Eastern European Latvians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Poles...etc, who collaborated with the German Army and Sondercommandos during WW2. The only country that truly punished their collaborators after the war was the Soviet Union, but they already had their system (Gulag) in place before the war. There were just too many 'helpers' to purge and in many cases they were in charge after the war.

As the Americans learned to use the 'lesser' Nazis after WW2, to rebuild Germany and protect it from Communism; Kenyatta used them to keep himself in power after independence. These Loyalist knew how to keep the opposition quiet, even if it meant 'planting' them in the ground.

Stalin is purported to have said, "the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic". That's the way those in the war against the Mau Mau (which killed less than 100 white settlers) were able to get away with what they did.

Oh yeah, it's the same reason that those killed in Darfur will never see justice for what was done to them. Or Rwanda, or Cambodia or or or...

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Best historical read

I read this book as a supplemental material to an undergraduate course in African Politics. With the background knowledge I had, the story was extremely horrifying but brought to my attention the effects of colonialism I had never before considered or heard of. The connection between WWII, colonialism in Kenya and the present Kenyan state was enhanced significantly after reading this story.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Like new. Paperback.

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