A Ohio University Press Book
Edited by Julie MacArthur
Introduction by Julie MacArthur
Foreword by Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
“Had Julie MacArthur produced a volume containing simply the text of Kimathi’s trial that achievement alone would have been worthy of high praise. To bring together the additional documents presented here – and garner the participation and resultant scholarship of these contributors – is an extraordinary accomplishment. Faculty might assign Dedan Kimathi on Trial in the undergraduate classroom, but perhaps most importantly, it will be read and fiercely argued over in Kenya.”
Canadian Journal of African Studies
“[This] publication accords Kenya and the world yet another moment of serious reflection and stock taking in revisiting one of Africa’s most compelling moments in the history of resistance against colonialist and imperialist injustice.”
From the foreword by Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
“The scholarly reflections brought together in this volume reveal the deep historical significance of figures like Kimathi, the moral lessons we can learn from the past, and the continuing relevance of the struggle for independence in Kenya today.”
From the introductory note by Chief Justice Willy Mutunga
“With the proceedings and exhibits of Kimathi’s show trial produced in gripping detail, and essays showing why this trial mattered far beyond a Nyeri courtroom in 1956, MacArthur superbly situates Kimathi’s fate amidst African resistance to crumbling empire.”
Huw Bennett, author of Fighting the Mau Mau: The British Army and Counter-Insurgency in the Kenya Emergency
Perhaps no figure embodied the ambiguities, colonial fears, and collective imaginations of Kenya’s decolonization era more than Dedan Kimathi, the self-proclaimed field marshal of the rebel forces that took to the forests to fight colonial rule in the 1950s. Kimathi personified many of the contradictions that the Mau Mau rebellion represented: rebel statesman, literate peasant, modern traditionalist. His capture and trial in 1956, and subsequent execution, for many marked the end of the rebellion and turned Kimathi into a patriotic martyr.
Dedan Kimathi on Trial unearths a piece of the colonial archive long thought lost, hidden, or destroyed. Its discovery and landmark publication unsettles an already contentious history and prompts fresh examinations of its reverberations in the present.
Here, the entire trial transcript is available for the first time. This critical edition also includes provocative contributions from leading Mau Mau scholars reflecting on the meaning of the rich documents offered here and the figure of Kimathi in a much wider field of historical and contemporary concerns. These include the nature of colonial justice; the moral arguments over rebellion, nationalism, and the end of empire; and the complexities of memory and memorialization in contemporary Kenya.
Contributors: David Anderson, Simon Gikandi, Nicholas Githuku, Lotte Hughes, and John Lonsdale. Introductory note by Willy Mutunga.
Julie MacArthur is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Cartography and the Political Imagination as well as numerous articles. She has also worked extensively in African cinema, both as a curator and an academic. More info →
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Research in International Studies, Global and Comparative Studies, № 17
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978-0-89680-317-6
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Release date: November 2017
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Electronic
978-0-89680-501-9
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Obama and Kenya
Contested Histories and the Politics of Belonging
By Matthew Carotenuto and Katherine Luongo
Barack Obama’s political ascendancy has focused worldwide attention on Kenya. Carotenuto and Luongo argue that efforts to cast Obama as a “son of the soil” of the Lake Victoria basin invite insights into the politicized uses of Kenya’s past. Ideal for classroom use and directed at a general readership interested in global affairs, Obama and Kenya offers an important counterpoint to the many popular, but inaccurate texts about Kenya’s history and Obama’s place in it.
World and Comparative History · International Studies · African Studies · American Studies · Kenya
Mau Mau and Nationhood
Arms, Authority, and Narration
Edited by E. S. Atieno Odhiambo and John Lonsdale
Fifty years after the declaration of the state of emergency, Mau Mau still excites argument and controversy, not least in Kenya itself. Mau Mau and Nationhood is a collection of essays providing the most recent thinking on the uprising and its aftermath.The work of well-established scholars as well as of young researchers with fresh perspectives, Mau Mau and Nationhood achieves a multilayered analysis of a subject of enduring interest.
African History · Violence in Society · Nationalism · African Studies · Mau Mau · Eastern Africa · Kenya
The Boy Is Gone
Conversations with a Mau Mau General
By Laura Lee P. Huttenbach
A story with the power to change how people view the last years of colonialism in East Africa, The Boy Is Gone portrays the struggle for Kenyan independence in the words of a freedom fighter whose life spanned the twentieth century’s most dramatic transformations. Born into an impoverished farm family in the Meru Highlands, Japhlet Thambu grew up wearing goatskins and lived to stand before his community dressed for business in a pressed suit, crisp tie, and freshly polished shoes.
Biography · Colonialism and Decolonization · African History · African Studies · Mau Mau · Kenya
Mau Mau from Below
By Greet Kershaw
John Lonsdale says in his introduction:“This is the oral evidence of the Kikuyu villagers with whom Greet Kershaw lived as an aid worker during the Mau Mau ‘Emergency’ in the 1950s, and which is now totally irrecoverable in any form save in her own field notes.Professor
African Studies · Kikuyu · Africa · Eastern Africa · Kenya · Mau Mau · History · African History · Anthropology · Violence in Society
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