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Histories Of The Hanged
The Dirty War In Kenya And The End Of Empire
by David Anderson


9.8

based on 16 reviews
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based on 6 votes
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BOOKS:

Imperial Reckoning by Caroline Elkins

Official Publisher Site

Anderson, an Oxford lexturer, chronicles the British Empire's final decade in Kenya, during which time it battled the Mau Mau rebels in a bloody conflict that saw the imperialists resorting to the use of rigged military tribunals and concentration camps which resulted in the loss of thousands of lives.

W. W. Norton & Company, 406 pages
01/30/2005
$25.95

ISBN: 0393059863

Nonfiction
History

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Publishers Weekly

This is vital reading for any student of British colonial and African history.

Los Angeles Times Stanley Meisler

[A] remarkable and lucid account... Anderson's narrative -- bolstered by realistic descriptions of life in Kenya and informed analysis of the causes of the Mau Mau insurrection -- is ample, judicious and elegant. [16 Jan 2005, p.R5]

The Guardian Richard Dowden

Where Anderson gets inside the minds and passions of both sides and, best of all, inside the agony of those simply caught up in the horror and forced to make appalling choices, [Caroline] Elkins remains rigidly one dimensional in her understanding.

The Independent Stephen Howe

Anderson's research on Mau Mau trials and their victims, and Elkins's on the detention camps, not only transform our understanding of empire's end, but should produce political shock-waves... Anderson is stronger on the broad contexts of British colonial policy and ideology.

London Review Of Books Bernard Porter

It is the scale of the British atrocities in Kenya that is the most startling revelation of these books.

Daily Telegraph Max Hastings

Anderson's marshalling of evidence seems more dispassionate, and is thus even more damning.

The Nation Daphne Eviatar

A vivid and comprehensive new account of the war... Not only offer[s] an important corrective to the long-distorted story of the end of British empire in Kenya but also serve[s] as a stark reminder of the cynical justifications that fear can foster and that history eventually lays bare.

Booklist Gilbert Taylor

A dispassionate but disturbing account, Anderson's history will be vital to understanding Kenya's terrible endgame of colonialism. [1 Jan 2005, p.805]

Kirkus Reviews

Anderson's study adds materially to the understanding of not only the Kenyan war but also of colonialism's end in Africa.

New York Review Of Books Neal Ascherson

Of the two authors David Anderson does the most to rescue Mau Mau from pathology and to restore the movement to history.

The Economist

Mr Anderson's re-examination of the court records in order to assess whether British justice was fair or flawed does not make for happy reading.

Washington Post Mahmood Mamdani

Anderson's political acumen gives us the clues necessary to reflect on the war's lessons.

San Francisco Chronicle Austin Merrill

Anderson and Elkins are academics, and in places their books feel overstudied. Their research and meticulous attention to detail are remarkable, but at times their narrative threads fray, and we are left with page after page of gory details and data.

The New York Times Book Review Daniel Bergner

Anderson's book... never manages to render a vivid martyr. Examples of colonial judicial corruption and hypocrisy are thoroughly explored, but little room is left for character.

The Spectator Robert Oakeshott

For many there is doubtless something extraordinarily chilling and macabre about state executions, whether in colonial Kenya or today’s Texas.

Daily Telegraph Nicholas Best

[Anderson is] righteously indignant at Britain's conduct of the war, yet do[es] not say what alternatives existed. [He] make[s] no attempt to put [himself] in the authorities' shoes, faced with nightly massacres in which oath-taking and witchcraft played an unpredictable part.

The average user rating for this book is 9.8 (out of 10) based on 6 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Johan S gave it a10:
A shattering eye-opener of a book. And what goes on in Iraq these days shows how little we have learned. If you have to violate basic human rights to implement your version of civilization in a culture, then civilization is not the propriate word.

Emmie S gave it a10:
I taught high school in Kikuyuland in 1962, the year after most detainees were released. These memories were painfully raw, the only villages were the emergency villages she describes. My students had all passed in front of the man with the bag over his head, whose nod meant you were sent into detention or executed. I have read this book and am glad to see that someone who will be listened to has finally documented a genocide which has been allowed to be buried under the carpet because we could not believe believe our respectable English allies could cover up such unspeakable crimes, and then burn the documentary evidence. Why did Harvard not publish this book? When confronted with a tide of letters smuggled out of the camps documenting the executions, torture, death from malnutrition and disease, not only of men, but of women and children, etc. the primary reaction of the Colonial Secretary was to demand that the letters be stopped, not to deal with the human rights violations on a mass scale. My only quarrel with the author is that I think her judgment of Kenyatta a bit harsh in the end... he had opposed the use of violence and was rejected by those who espoused the use of guerrilla war; had he included those same elements in his first government, we do not know what other path history might have taken. It was his to make the choices, and many worse things could have happened in Kenya in the next 20 years than did happen -- civil war, foreign instigated coup d'etat, etc. The criticism reminds me a bit of those who criticize Mandela for not being left-wing enough...

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Histories Of The Hanged The Dirty War In Kenya And The End Of Empire by David Anderson

Histories Of The Hanged
The Dirty War In Kenya And The End Of Empire
by David Anderson