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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. Dominated by Kikuyu, Meru and Embu fighters, the KLFA also comprised units of Kamba and Maasai who fought against the European colonists in Kenya, the British Army, and the local Kenya Regiment.
The Malayan Emergency, also known as the Anti–British National Liberation War(1948–1960), was a guerrilla war fought in British Malaya between communist pro-independence fighters of the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) and the military forces of the Federation of Malaya, British Empire and Commonwealth. The communists fought to win independence for Malaya from the British Empire and to establish a socialist economy, while the Malayan Federation and Commonwealth forces fought to combat communism and protect British economic and colonial interests. The term "Emergency" was used by the British to characterise the conflict in order to avoid referring to it as a war, because London-based insurers would not pay out in instances of civil wars.
The secretary of state for the colonies or colonial secretary was the Cabinet of the United Kingdom's minister in charge of managing the British Empire.
Decolonization or decolonisation is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. The meanings and applications of the term are disputed. Some scholars of decolonization focus especially on independence movements in the colonies and the collapse of global colonial empires. Other scholars extend the meaning to include economic, cultural and psychological aspects of the colonial experience.
Evelyn Baring, 1st Baron Howick of Glendale,, was Governor of Southern Rhodesia from 1942 to 1944, High Commissioner for Southern Africa from 1944 to 1951, and Governor of Kenya from 1952 to 1959. Baring played an integral role in the suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion. Together with Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd, Baring played a significant role in the government's efforts to deal with the rebellion, and see Kenya through to independence. Baring was aware of abuses against Mau Mau detainees. He was elevated to being the 1st Baron Howick of Glendale in 1960.
The territorial evolution of the British Empire is considered to have begun with the foundation of the English colonial empire in the late 16th century. Since then, many territories around the world have been under the control of the United Kingdom or its predecessor states. When the Kingdom of Great Britain was formed in 1707 by the union of the Kingdoms of Scotland and England, the latter country's colonial possessions passed to the new state. Similarly, when Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland in 1801 to form the United Kingdom, control over its colonial possessions passed to the latter state. Collectively, these territories are referred to as the British Empire. When much of Ireland gained independence in 1922 as the Irish Free State, the other territories of the empire remained under the control of the United Kingdom.
The decolonisation of Africa is a process that largely took place from the mid-1950s to 1975 during the Cold War, with radical government changes on the continent as colonial governments made the transition to independent states. The process was often marred with violence, political turmoil, widespread unrest, and organised revolts in both northern and sub-Saharan countries including the Mau Mau rebellion in British Kenya, the Algerian War in French Algeria, the Congo Crisis in the Belgian Congo, the Angolan War of Independence in Portuguese Angola, the Zanzibar Revolution in the Sultanate of Zanzibar, and the Nigerian Civil War in the secessionist state of Biafra.
Alan Tindal Lennox-Boyd, 1st Viscount Boyd of Merton, CH, PC, DL, was a British Conservative politician.
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Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya, published in UK as Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya', is a 2005 non-fiction book written by Caroline Elkins and published by Henry Holt. It won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.
The Colonial Office was a government department of the Kingdom of Great Britain and later of the United Kingdom, first created in 1768 from the Southern Department to deal with colonial affairs in North America, until merged into the new Home Office in 1782. In 1801, colonial affairs were transferred to the War Office in the lead up to the Napoleonic Wars, which became the War and Colonial Office to oversee and protect the colonies of the British Empire. The Colonial Office was re-created as a separate department 1854, under the colonial secretary. It was finally merged into the Commonwealth Office in 1966.
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The "Wind of Change" speech was an address made by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to the Parliament of South Africa on 3 February 1960 in Cape Town. He had spent a month in Africa in visiting a number of British colonies. When the Labour Party was in government from 1945 to 1951, it had started a process of decolonisation, but the policy had been halted or at least slowed down by the Conservative governments since 1951. Macmillan's speech signalled that the Conservative Party, which formed the British government, would no longer impede independence for many of those territories.
The Chuka massacre, which happened in Chuka, Kenya, was perpetrated by members of B Company, 5th Battalion of the King's African Rifles (KAR) in June 1953 with 20 unarmed people killed during the Mau Mau uprising. The company commander Major G. S. L. Griffiths was found guilty of one murder.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office Migrated Archives are a collection of about 20,000 files and other records created by the governments of 37 British colonial dependencies, removed to the UK at independence, and held clandestinely for decades in various repositories in and around London. They came only from territories administered by the Colonial Office, so not from India and other dependencies administered by the India Office and its predecessors, whose records are in the India Office Records at the British Library.
Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire is a 2022 nonfiction history book by American historian and professor Caroline Elkins. The book covers the history of the British Empire from the Great Bengal famine of 1770 through the post-World War II period of recurring end-of-empire insurgencies up until the present-day, including the Mau Mau High Court case and the ongoing imperial history wars. The book was short-listed for the 2022 Baillie Gifford Award.
References
- ↑ Gilbert, Rosa (3 November 2016). "Erasing Empire". Jacobin.
- ↑ Cobain, Ian (2016). The history thieves: secrets, lies and the shaping of a modern nation. London: Portobello Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1-84627-584-5.
- ↑ Elkins, Caroline (2022). Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire. Knopf Doubleday. p. 618. ISBN 978-0-593-32008-2.
- 1 2 Bowman, Craig (9 January 2014). "Operation Legacy: How Britain Destroyed Thousands Of Colonial Files". War History Online. Retrieved 26 July 2017.
- 1 2 Milmo, Cahal (29 November 2013). "Revealed: How British Empire's dirty secrets went up in smoke in the colonies" . The Independent. Archived from the original on 2022-05-24. Retrieved March 12, 2022.
- ↑ Cobain, Ian; Bowcott, Owen; Norton-Taylor, Richard (17 April 2012). "Britain destroyed records of colonial crimes". The Guardian.
- ↑ Wavell: The Viceroy's Journal : Ed. by Penderel Moon (PDF). Oxford University Press. 1973. pp. Entry dated September 5. 1946.
- ↑ Rostron, Bryan (28 June 2020). "OP-ED: The horror! The horror! The long colonial hangover". Daily Maverick . Retrieved 18 January 2021.
- ↑ Sato, Shohei (11 April 2017). "'Operation Legacy': Britain's Destruction and Concealment of Colonial Records Worldwide". The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 45 (4): 697–719. doi: 10.1080/03086534.2017.1294256 . ISSN 0308-6534.
