Kenya: From Colonization to Independence, 1888-1970

Kenya is independent, but we have yet to weight the rights and wrongs of that independence. Is Kenya to be condemned for the massacre at Lari of British Loyalists by Kikuyu freedom fighters? If so, then the history of Great Britain before and after the “Hola Camp Massacre,” a similar massacre of Kikuyu by loyalist guards at a detention camp during the Emergency, stands for nothing. Politicians and generals have the awful responsibility of deciding by which methods to achieve what each nation believes to be its legitimate ends. The reckoning must wait until later. To take an innocent life is difficult to justify at any time, but although the morality of the Hiroshima bomb is debated still, there is less argument on the validity of the Allied cause. Perhaps we are too close to those grim days in Kenya for a final verdict, but it would be desirable to replace recrimination with understanding. To this end, we must analyze the historical causes of Mau Mau and delve further into the colonial history of the country. That history, for better or worse, explains the forging of Kenya from 1888 to 1970. The object of this volume, therefore, is to deal effectively with the molding of the present-day Kenya. The book may perhaps offend some people, but it is a small man who cannot face the truth. Propaganda is certainly not the motive for its writing. The aim is not to stir up the ashes of discord, any more than historians of two world wars seek to revive hatred of Germany. However, insidious neo-colonialism still exists in the world, and with it one cause of war, at least, which is avoidable.