Mau Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of a Peasant Revolt

Mau Mau and Kenya widens the debate about the Mau Mau revolt and adds an African voice to the examination and interpretation of an important event in African history. Wunyabari Maloba describes this unique peasant revolt against British colonialism, offering a fresh look at a movement that has been "reinvented" by ideologues on the Left and Right in post-colonial Kenya. Was Mau Mau a national effort or an ethnic outburst? What were its political aims? Maloba describes the Mau Mau legacy, concentrating on three issues: participants and their differing ideologies; relationships between the revolt and the conventional party politics of the Kenya African Union; and the impact of Mau Mau on decolonization in Kenya.