Brutal Mau Mau Camps In Kenya Were An Extension Of Britain’s Colonial Prison System – Historian Traces Their Roots
Soldiers round up suspected Mau Mau rebels in Kenya. Getty Images BY IAN CAISTOR-PARKER PH.D STUDENT, UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK During the Mau Mau uprising between 1952 and 1960, the British colonial government confined an estimated 150,000 Kenyans in a sprawling network of “emergency” detention camps. None of those held in the camps had been found guilty in a court of law. Instead, they were detained on suspicion of supporting the uprising. British control over Kenya was effectively declared in 1895. A distinctive feature of colonial rule was the decision to encourage white settlement. These settlers were granted vast tracts of Kenya’s most fertile land and pushed policy in an increasingly harsh and unequal direction. By the early 1950s, many African Kenyans were facing severe land shortages in the countryside and desperate living conditions in urban areas. In 1952, this situation erupted into the Mau Mau uprising, a broadly anti-colonial rebellion . The British government responded ...
