HI32B: Kenya’s Mau Mau Rebellion, 1952-60
Handbook, 2013-14
Professor David Anderson (d.m.anderson@warwick.ac.uk)
Office: H0.13, Humanities Building (Office hours t.b.a.)
Professor Daniel Branch (d.p.branch@warwick.ac.uk)
Office: H0.12, Humanities Building (Office hours Monday 2-3pm and Wednesday 11am-12pm)
Please note that this handbook is a summary of a far greater amount of material available on the
module website
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/undergraduate/modules/mau_mau/
Class times
Seminar group 1: Thursday 10-12pm in H2.42
Seminar group 2: Thursday 12-2pm in R1.03
Allocation of students to each seminar group has been emailed to all and can be found on the
module webpage. Please note the entire group will meet in R1.03 between 12-2pm on weeks 1 and
2 of the term 1.
Summary
This undergraduate final-year Special Subject module is intended to examine a wide variety of sources
related to the origins, conduct and memorialisation of Kenya’s Mau Mau war of 1952-60. The sources will
reveal the complexity and ambiguities of what was both an anti-colonial rebellion against British rule and
a civil war within the colony’s Kikuyu community. The module has a particular focus on the latter aspect.
The sources used will include the memoirs of the participants, official records from Kenya and the UK,
and fictionalised accounts of the war in Britain and Kenya. Sources produced by all sides of the conflict
will be discussed. Students will examine the on-going uses of a deeply contested historical event.
Aims
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Discuss the place of Mau Mau within the wider history of colonial Africa and the longer
histories of British imperialism and Kenyan politics.
Understand the complexity of anti-colonial rebellions.
Understand the methodological challenges of archival-based research into colonised
societies.
Demonstrate an ability to evaluate critically a range of secondary and primary sources, and
an enhanced capability for individual and self-motivated study.
Have gained an understanding of the availability, uses and limits of primary source material
for historical analysis;
Have interrogated textual and archival historical sources.
Assessed & non-assessed essays
Every student must complete two non-assessed 2000 word essays. These are due on:
 Thursday 14 November (week 7, term 1).
1
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Thursday 9 January (week 1, term 2)
An optional mock exam can also be completed. The exam paper will be distributed on 13 February
for submission on 20 February (week 7, term 2).
Assessment is by a two hour exam and 1 x 4500 word essay due in the summer term UNLESS a
dissertation is attached to the module, in which case the assessment is 1 x 3 hour exam.
Students can create their own essay titles, but suggestions are listed on each seminar page of the
module website.
Reading
Required reading for each seminar is listed on the website. We also recommend you purchase
copies of David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of
Empire (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005) and E.S. Atieno Odhiambo & John Lonsdale (eds),
Mau Mau and Nationhood: Arms, Authority and Narration (Oxford: James Currey, 2003).
Much of the seminar teaching will be based around primary sources. All these sources will be
available online through the module website.
An extensive reading list is provided on the module website.
Seminar timetable
Readings and questions for discussion for each week are listed on the module website
WEEK
SEMINAR
Historiography: Mau Maus of the Mind
1
Mau Mau: The Legal Case and the Context
The Conquest of Kikuyuland, to 1914
2
The Colonial Moment in Kikuyuland, 1914-39
AUTUMN
TERM
3
The Politics of Reproduction: Generation, Gender and Property
4
The Politics of Labour: Masters and Servants, 1905-1952
5
The Politics of Land: Squatters and Olenguruone, 1905-52
6
~ reading week ~
7
Towards the State of Emergency
8
Emergency Powers and the White Highlanders
9
Mau Mau’s Land and Freedom Army
2
SPRING
TERM
10
Creating Kikuyu Loyalists
11
The British Countersinsurgency, 1952-56
12
Winning ‘Hearts and Minds’
13
Detention and Villagization
14
Mwea, Hola and the Rule of Law
15
Kenya’s Politics of Decolonization
16
~ reading week ~
17
Interpreting Mau Mau
18
Mau Mau in Fiction
19
Mau Mau at the Movies
20
Conference
3