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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Mau Maus of the Mind: Making Mau Mau and Remaking Kenya
Author:Lonsdale, JohnISNI
Year:1990
Periodical:The Journal of African History
Volume:31
Issue:3
Pages:393-421
Language:English
Geographic term:Kenya
Subjects:Mau Mau
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
nationalism
colonialism
History and Exploration
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/182877
Abstract:This article explores the imaginative meanings of Mau Mau which white and black protagonists invented out of their fearful ambitions for the future of Kenya. Within the general assumptions of white superiority and the need to destroy Mau Mau savagery, four mutually incompatible European myths can be picked out. Conservatives argued that Mau Mau revealed the latent terror-laden primitivism in all Africans, the Kikuyu especially. This reversion had been stimulated by the dangerous freedoms offered by too liberal a colonialism. Liberals blamed Mau Mau on the bewildering psychological effects of rapid social change and the collapse of orderly tribal values. Africans must be brought more decisively through the period of transition from tribal conformity to competitive society, to play a full part in a multiracial future dominated by Western culture. Christian fundamentalists saw Mau Mau as collective sin, to be overcome by individual confession and conversion. The British military saw the emergency as a political war which needed political solutions, for which repression, social improvement and spiritual revival were no substitute. They, and the 'hard-core' Mau Mau detainees who thought like them, cleared the way for the peace. This was won not by any of the white constructions of the rising but by Kenyatta's Kikuyu political thought, which inspired yet criminalized Mau Mau. Notes, ref.
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