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| Location | Nyeri, Kenya |
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| Coordinates | 0°26′24″S36°57′51″E / 0.439980°S 36.964068°E |
| Type | History museum |
The Nyeri Museum (Swahili: Makumbusho ya Nyeri) is a history museum located in Nyeri, Kenya. The museum is dedicated to the history of Kenya and the Kikuyu culture.
The museum building was built in 1924, but it began to be used in 1925 to settle common law cases. [1] The intention with creating this building was to centralize the cases in a customary system of justice in the Colony of Kenya. [2] An additional hall was built due to the increase in cases, the reason for this is because the courtroom was unable to handle so many cases, civil cases were held in the first courtroom while criminal cases were held in the second courtroom. [3] In the 1970s, after the construction of the Nyeri Law Courts, this building became obsolete and was later used as a meeting hall by the Nyeri Municipal Council. [4] In 1997, control of the building was transferred to the National Museums of Kenya. [5] At that time, the National Museums of Kenya decided to renovate the building. [6] In 2001, the museum was declared national property. [3]
In November 2019, Google collaborated with the National Museums of Kenya, and among its programs included an adapted version of Google Street View of the Nyeri museum, in which it is possible to virtually visit the museum's rooms. [7]
The museum contains handmade weapons, iron shields and helmets used by the Mau Mau. The museum also contains a passbook used by the British to control the movement of different groups of peoples such as the Kikuyu, Meru and Embu. [8] The museum contains information about Kenya's independence process. [9] The museum has a collection of portraits of Tom Mboya and Pio Gama Pinto, as well as exhibits on the role of women in Kenyan history. [10] The museum also has a collection of photographs of the Askaris. [11] The museum contains helmets and shields from Kenya's colonial period, as well as bricks made by the Aguthi Works Camp detainees. [12] The museum also has helmets and shields from colonial times. [13]
A part of Eastern Africa, the territory of what is known as Kenya has seen human habitation since the beginning of the Lower Paleolithic. The Bantu expansion from a West African centre of dispersal reached the area by the 1st millennium AD. With the borders of the modern state at the crossroads of the Bantu, Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic ethno-linguistic areas of Africa, Kenya is a truly multi-ethnic state.
The Kenya African National Union (KANU) is a Kenyan political party that ruled for nearly 40 years after Kenya's independence from British colonial rule in 1963 until its electoral loss in 2002. It was known as Kenya African Union (KAU) from 1944 but due to pressure from the colonial government, KAU changed its name to Kenya African Study Union (KASU) mainly because all political parties were banned in 1939 following the start of the Second World War. In 1946 KASU rebranded itself into KAU following the resignation of Harry Thuku as president due to internal differences between the moderates who wanted peaceful negotiations and the militants who wanted to use force, the latter forming the Aanake a forty, which later became the Mau Mau. His post was then occupied by James Gichuru, who stepped down for Jomo Kenyatta in 1947 as president of KAU. The KAU was banned by the colonial government from 1952 to 1960. It was re-established by James Gichuru in 1960 and renamed KANU on 14 May 1960 after a merger with Tom Mboya's Kenya Independence Movement.
The Mau Mau rebellion (1952–1960), also known as the Mau Mau uprising, Mau Mau revolt, or Kenya Emergency, was a war in the British Kenya Colony (1920–1963) between the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), also known as the Mau Mau, and the British authorities.
The Kikuyu are a Bantu ethnic group native to Central Kenya. At a population of 8,148,668 as of 2019, they account for 17.13% of the total population of Kenya, making them Kenya's largest ethnic group.
Dedan Kimathi Waciuri, born Kimathi wa Waciuri in what was then British Kenya, was the senior military and spiritual leader of the Mau Mau Uprising. Widely regarded as a revolutionary leader, he led the armed military struggle against the British colonial regime in Kenya in the 1950s until his capture in 1956 and execution in 1957. Kimathi is credited with leading efforts to create formal military structures within the Mau Mau, and convening a war council in 1953. He, along with Baimungi M'marete, Musa Mwariama, General China and Muthoni Kirima, was one of the Field Marshals.
Nyeri is a town situated in the Central Highlands of Kenya. It is the county headquarters of Nyeri County. The town was the central administrative headquarters of the country's former Central Province. Following the dissolution of the former provinces by Kenya's new constitution on 26 August 2010, the city is situated about 150 km north of Kenya's capital Nairobi, in the country's densely populated and fertile Central Highlands, lying between the eastern base of the Aberdare (Nyandarua) Range, which forms part of the eastern end of the Great Rift Valley, and the western slopes of Mount Kenya.
Elspeth Joscelin Huxley CBE was an English writer, journalist, broadcaster, magistrate, environmentalist, farmer, and government adviser. She wrote over 40 books, including her best-known lyrical books, The Flame Trees of Thika and The Mottled Lizard, based on her youth in a coffee farm in British Kenya. Her husband, Gervas Huxley, was a grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley and a cousin of Aldous Huxley.
Kikuyu or Gikuyu is a Bantu language spoken by the Gĩkũyũ (Agĩkũyũ) of Kenya. Kikuyu is mainly spoken in the area between Nyeri and Nairobi. The Kikuyu people usually identify their lands by the surrounding mountain ranges in Central Kenya which they call Kĩrĩnyaga. The Gikuyu language is intelligibly similar to its surrounding neighbors, the Meru and Embu.
Murang'a County is one of the counties of Kenya's former Central Province. Its largest town and capital is Murang'a, which was referred to as Fort Hall during the colonial era. The county is inhabited mainly by and is considered the birthplace of the Gikuyu, the largest ethnic group in Kenya. The county has a population of 1,056,640 based on the 2019 census.
The White Highlands is an area in the central uplands of Kenya. It was traditionally the homeland of indigenous Central Kenyan communities up to the colonial period, when it became the centre of European settlement in colonial Kenya, and between 1902 and 1961 was officially reserved for the exclusive use of Europeans by the colonial government.
Waruhiu Itote, nom de guerreGeneral China, was one of the key leaders of the Mau Mau Uprising (1952–1960) in British Kenya alongside Dedan Kimathi, Stanley Mathenge, Kurito ole Kisio, Musa Mwariama and Muthoni Kirima.
The 1959 Hola massacre was a massacre committed by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau Uprising at a colonial detention camp in Hola, Kenya.
Caroline Elkins is Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Harvard University, the Thomas Henry Carroll/Ford Foundation Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Affiliated Professor at Harvard Law School, and the Founding Oppenheimer Faculty Director of Harvard's Center for African Studies.
Mugo wa Kibiru or Chege (Cege) wa Kibiru was a Kenyan sage from the Gikuyu tribe who lived in the 18th and early 19th centuries. His name "Mugo" means "a healer". Mugo wa Kibiru was born in Kariara, Murang'a, near Thika, but his exact dates of birth and death are unknown.
Harry Thuku was a Kenyan born in Kiambu, Mitahato village. As a politician, he was one of the pioneers in the development of modern African nationalism in Kenya. He helped found the Young Kikuyu Association and the East African Association before being arrested and exiled from 1922 to 1931. In 1932 he became President of the Kikuyu Central Association, in 1935 founded the Kikuyu Provincial Association, and in 1944 founded the Kenya African Study Union. Opposed to the Mau Mau movement, he later retired to coffee-farming.
Stanley Mathenge wa Mirugi was a Mau Mau military leader.
The Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), also known as the Mau Mau, was a guerrilla army, formed mainly by the people of central and eastern Kenya, dominated by the Kikuyu people. It resisted British Colonial rule in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion from 1952 to 1960. The army was led by Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi. The rebellion was largely military defeated by the British by 1956 and Kimathi was executed by hanging in 1957. Kenya gained full independence in 1964.
Field-Marshal Muthoni wa Kirima was a top-ranking female fighter in Mau Mau's 1950s rebellion against British colonialism. Few Mau Mau women became active fighters, and Muthoni was the only woman to have attained the Mau Mau rank of field-marshal.
During the colonial occupation of Kenya, Black Africans working on farms owned by white settlers were called "squatters" by the British. As of 1945, there were over 200,000 such squatters in the Highlands and more than half were Kikuyu. The Mau Mau rebellion began amongst these squatters in the late 1940s and after independence in the early 1960s, peasants started squatting land in rural areas without the permission of the owner.
