Professor Caroline Elkins brings out the brutality of british repression against the Kikuyu in new book about the last days of colonial kenya

Cougar Face
   The British has attempted to do in Kenya what the British were so successful in North America and this was to supplement the colony with British settlers taking all of the best lands for commercial interests. The Kikuyu was the tribe most affected by the British land colonial grab thefts and from 1952-1960 there was massive armed resistance against British colonial rule. The Mau Mau freedom fighters were labeled a terrorist operation back then but in reality the massive terrorism was constructed by both British soldiers and their trained loyalist subjects who often handed out much of the brutality. Author Caroline Elkins writes a book called "Imperial Reckoning" that exposes the brutality and gulag the supposedly civilized British were trying to bring to the dark continent. the book covers the tremendous sadistic of life in the camps and Caroline Elkins gives an excellent portray of the bitterness of the British and their allies against the Mau Mau who were seen less than human by both the British and many of the non-Kikuya loyal to the redcoats. The treatment of the Kikuyu was akin to both Israeli treatment of Palestinians and the detained people to this day in Guantanamo. For the Kiyuku though the repression that followed their defeat for seven years was a nightmare as the British placed concentration camps all over the country as Elkins points out and the odium feelings that settler and loyalist held for the savageness of the Kikuyu justified these further repression in their eyes.  Elkins does a great job explaining how the situation and hopelessness had boiled to the point where the traditional Kikuya oath of manhood soon developed into a oath of resistance against the theft of their traditional lands from an overseas empire. This empire had pretty much made life more difficult for their pastoralists kicking them out of the white highlands and the introduction of mechanization of farming displaces may who were still able to eke out somewhat meager livings working on the large white-owned estates.  The Kikuya and their rebellion would be an inspiration to many other subjects of European colonialization and the British soon found it too costly and their methods of extraction subservience too brutal as they soon left Kenya and the country received their independence. for American Indians the Kikuya and their battle against the White man is inspiring and no less brave and necessary as was the resistance of the Sioux, Comanche, or Creek.