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Senior Chief Waruhiu wa Kung’u is one of colonial Kenya’s most controversial chiefs. His name has gone down in history as a traitor who was assassinated because he sold his country to the British colonizers. This book is the untold story of the controversial life of Senior Chief Waruhiu who served the colonial government for thirty years. He believed his white superiors’ authority was God-given and to disobey them was tantamount to disobeying God himself. That was why he was considered loyal, obedient, dependable, responsible, efficient, and a tower of strength. Chief Waruhiu’s violent death dealt his reputation a devastating blow, as it provided his critics with a basis to portray him as a traitor who sold out to the colonizers. Although Waruhiu believed that the Africans were not yet ready for self-government—and that they could not attain it through violence—that did not make him a traitor. Other chiefs also believed that and yet were not labeled as traitors. However, this did lead to him being considered a very pro-government and pro-European chief who was opposed to the aspirations of his people and he, as a result, deserved to be killed. Although it is believed that Waruhiu was killed by Mau Mau, there is no evidence to support that claim. The white settler community gained a lot from Waruhiu’s murder as it paved the way for it to get what it had been demanding for a long time—a declaration of a state of emergency and the arrest and detention of African leaders. It is very likely that some leaders of the white settlers, working together with government officials, were probably behind Waruhiu’s murder. The police, the prosecution, and the court seemed determined to make the murder charges against the accused suspects stick in spite of glaring discrepancies and contradictions in the evidence against them. Above all, the prosecution failed to prove beyond any reasonable doubts that Waweru and Gathuku killed Waruhiu. Thus, the mystery of who killed Waruhiu and those behind his murder still remains unresolved and the perpetrators of the murder may never be known.
This book offers a genealogical critique of how food scarcity was governed in colonial Kenya. With an approach informed by the ‘analysis of government’, the study accounts for the emergence and persistence of dominant approaches to promoting food security in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa – policies and practices that prioritize increased agricultural production as the principal means of achieving food security. Drawing on a range of archival sources, the book investigates how those tasked with governing colonial Kenya confronted food as a particular kind of problem. It emphasizes the ways in which that problem shifted in conjunction with the emergence and consolidation of the colonial state and economic relations in the territory. The book applies a novel conceptual approach to the historical study of African food systems and famine, and provides the first longitudinal and in-depth analysis of the dynamics of food scarcity and its government in Kenya.
In Instructional Cinema and African Audiences in Colonial Kenya, 1926–1963, the author argues against the colonial logic instigating that films made for African audiences in Kenya influenced them to embrace certain elements of western civilization but Africans had nothing to offer in return. The author frames this logic as unidirectional approach purporting that Africans were passive recipients of colonial programs. Contrary to this understanding, the author insists that African viewers were active participants in the discourse of cinema in Kenya. Employing unorthodox means to protest mediocre films devoid of basic elements of film production, African spectators forced the colonial government to reconsider the way it produced films. The author frames the reconsideration as bidirectional approach. Instructional cinema first emerged as a tool to “educate” and “modernize” Africans, but it transformed into a contestable space of cultural and political power, a space that both sides appropriated to negotiate power and actualize their abstract ideas.
The Oxford Handbook of Kenyan Politics provides a comprehensive and comparative overview of the Kenyan political system as well as an insightful account of Kenyan history from 1930 to the present day.
Articoli / Articles Jon Abbink, On “Good Governance”: Towards Reconciling State and Vernacular Views in Southwest Ethiopia Erika Grasso, Mapping a “Far Away” Town: Ethnic Boundaries and Everyday Life in Marsabit (Northern Kenya) Rosanna Tramutoli, A Sociolinguistic Description of Gíing’áwêakshòoda: A Register of Respect Among Barbaig Speakers in Tanzania Alice Bellagamba and Marco Gardini, What is a “Slave”? Neo-Abolitionism and the Shifting Meanings of Slavery in Two African Contexts (Highlands of Madagascar, Southern Senegal) Joanna Lewis, Dynasties and Decolonization: Chieftaincy, Politics and the Use of History at the Victoria Falls, from the Precolonial to the Post-independence Period Tom McCaskie, Alcohol and the Travails of Asantehene Osei Yaw Autori / Contributors
This is the scandalous story of how the Maasai people of Kenya lost the best part of their land to the British in the 1900s. Drawing upon unique oral testimony and extensive archival research, Hughes describes the intrigues surrounding two enforced moves and the 1913 lawsuit, while explaining why recent events have brought the story full circle.
This book details the devastating Mau Mau civil war fought in Kenya during the 1950s and the legacies of that conflict for the post-colonial state. As many Kikuyu fought with the colonial government as loyalists joined the Mau Mau rebellion. Focusing on the role of those loyalists, the book examines the ways in which residents of the country's Central Highlands sought to navigate a path through the bloodshed and uncertainty of civil war. It explores the instrumental use of violence, changes to allegiances, and the ways in which cleavages created by the war informed local politics for decades after the conflict's conclusion. Moreover, the book moves toward a more nuanced understanding of the realities and effects of counterinsurgency warfare. Based on archival research in Kenya and the United Kingdom and insights from literature from across the social sciences, the book reconstructs the dilemmas facing members of society at war with itself and its colonial ruler.
George Ayittey’s Indigenous African Institutions presents a detailed and convincing picture of pre-colonial and post-colonial Africa - its cultures, traditions, and indigenous institutions, including participatory democracy.
This book advances research into the government-forced labor used widely in colonial Kenya from 1930 to 1963 after the passage of the International Labor Organization’s Forced Labour Convention. While the 1930 Convention intended to mark the suppression of forced labor practices, various exemptions meant that many coercive labor practices continued in colonial territories. Focusing on East Africa and the Kenya Colony, this book shows how the colonial administration was able to exploit the exemption clause for communal labor, thus ensuring the mobilization of African labor for infrastructure development. As an exemption, communal labor was not defined as forced labor but instead justified as a continuation of traditional African and community labor practices. Despite this ideological justification, the book shows that communal labour was indeed an intensification of coercive labor practices and one that penalized Africans for non-compliance with fines or imprisonment. The use of forced labor before and after the passage of the Convention is examined, with a focus on its use during World War II as well as in efforts to combat soil erosion in the rural African reserve areas in Kenya. The exploitation of female labor, the Mau Mau war of the 1950s, civilian protests, and the regeneration of communal labor as harambee after independence are also discussed.