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Article: Mau Mau and the bodysnatchers; British colonial history.(Histories of Kenya's Mau Mau uprising)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- January 1, 2005
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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How not to run an empire
THE common image of the Mau Mau fighter is hard to erase: dirty, sullen and intransigent, with hair matted into dreadlocks from his months on the run in Kenya's equatorial forests. From the start, Mau Mau was cast as a throwback from a dark and primitive past, with its blood oaths and its disembowellings. Not since the Black Hole of Calcutta did a single phrase so instantly conjure up the forces of evil that Britain's civilising mission abroad was supposed to be doing its best to overcome. Elspeth Huxley, the white settlers' literary spokesman, wrote in 1957 that Mau Mau was the "yell from the swamp".
In reality, as two new ...