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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | The Psychology of Rebellion: Colonial Medical Responses to Dissent in British East Africa |
| Author: | Mahone, Sloan |
| Year: | 2006 |
| Periodical: | The Journal of African History |
| Volume: | 47 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 241-258 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Kenya |
| Subjects: | prophets anticolonialism rebellions colonial policy images psychology colonialism History and Exploration Law, Human Rights and Violence Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
| About persons: | Elijah Masinde (ca1910-1987) Ndonye wa Kauti Kiamba wa Mutuaovio |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/4100723 |
| Abstract: | This article opens with a retelling of colonial accounts of the 'mania of 1911', which took place in the Kamba region of Kenya colony. The story of this 'psychic epidemic' and others like it would be recounted over the years as evidence depicting the predisposition of Africans to episodic mass hysteria. This use of medical and psychological language in primarily non-medical contexts serves to highlight the intellectual and political roles psychiatric ideas played in colonial governance. The salience of such ideas was often apparent in the face of increasing social tension, charismatic leadership and a proliferation of East African prophetic movements. The article addresses the attempts by the colonial authorities to understand or characterize, in psychological terms, a progression of African 'rebellious types' in society that often took the form of prophets and visionaries, but were diagnosed as epileptic, neurotic or suffering from 'religious mania'. Besides Kiamba wa Mutuaovio, the main perpetrator of the 1911 outbreak, the article also discusses the cases of the prophets Ndonye wa Kauti, who caused another disturbance in 1922, and Elijah Masinde, who was diagnosed as a religious maniac in 1945. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |
