Volume 52, Number 6 · April 7, 2005
The Breaking of the Mau Mau
By Neal Ascherson
Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya
by Caroline Elkins
Henry Holt, 475 pp., $27.50
Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire
by David Anderson
Norton, 406 pp., $25.95
I met Pordy Laneford in Cyprus. We had arrived on the same flight from Africa, and were assigned a room to share in the Astoria in Nicosia. It was in the late 1950s, that decade of colonial wars. In Cyprus, the British were struggling to crush the EOKA nationalist movement; the Astoria had grenade screens over the windows and a bomb hole in the garden. The French were fighting in Algeria, the British colonial 'emergencies' in Malaya and Kenya were winding down but still shedding blood, and President Nasser had just nationalized the Suez Canal. The Suez War, the ultimate fiasco of Franco-British imperialism, lay a few months in the future.
Review, 4894 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |