Trace and Tell your Family's Empire Stories
Country Histories
The region of East Africa comprising modern-day Kenya has had trading contact with the outside world for over a thousand years. However, it was only in the late nineteenth century that British rule was established and began to penetrate the interior of the country.
The white settlers who followed the building of the Uganda railway to establish huge farms in the region caused enormous frustration among the disenfranchised majority African population.
This culminated in the Mau Mau uprising that was brutally suppressed by the British from 1952. By this time, the African independence movement could not be ignored and Kenya became independent in 1963.
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A captured Mau Mau suspect, wearing a tattered shirt and trousers, stands on a hillside surrounded by heavily armed members of the Kikuyu Home Guard. Kenya, circa 1952. Copyright Images of Empire.
By 1950, mounting frustration over land distribution and political inequality in Kenya had led to the formation of the Mau Mau movement of civil disobedience and violent resistance to British rule. Its members belonged overwhelmingly to the dominant Kikuyu tribe and took traditional ritual oaths to mark their increasing involvement in the rebellion. Escalating Mau Mau activity led to the declaration of a state of emergency in Kenya between October 1952 and 1960.
The British response to the Mau Mau was successful in the sense that the rebellion had been brought under control within a few years. But the brutal actions this entailed continue to be highly controversial today. It has been officially estimated that over 11,000 Kikuyu Mau Mau and 2,000 African loyalists had been killed by 1956. By contrast there were only around 100 European deaths.
More than 20,000 Kikuyu were put into detention camps. African leaders, including Kenyatta
