Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Rebellion and Quiescence: Kenyan and Rhodesian Responses to Forced Removals in the 1950s

  • Chapter
Agency and Action in Colonial Africa

  • 68 Accesses

Abstract

Liberation wars — Mau Mau in the 1950s and guerrilla conflict in the 1970s — have been defining moments in the history and historiography of Kenya and Rhodesia-Zimbabwe respectively. The past ten or so years have seen the publication of a substantial scholarship on these struggles.1 The only comparative study of the two wars, or rather the two territories, is Terence Ranger’s Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe, published in 1985. This paper, too, is a comparative study, much briefer, narrower in focus (dealing with one sector of the peasantry) and with a reverse emphasis; Ranger’s concentration was Zimbabwe, with very few excursions into Kenya’s history (fettered by the relative paucity of scholarship on Mau Mau at the time of his writing). Here, though, the focus is Kenya. The question that Ranger posed was the problem that triggered this exploration: why no Mau Mau in Rhodesia?

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. For instance, Tabitha Kanogo, Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau (London: James Currey, 1987); Frank Furedi, The Mau Mau War in Perspective (London: James Currey, 1989); David Throup, Economic and Social Origins of Mau Mau (London: James Currey, 1988); Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley (London: James Currey, 1992), chapters 10 and 11; Wunyabari Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of a Peasant Revolt (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993); Greet Kershaw, Mau Mau From Below (London: James Currey, 1997); Terence Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe: A Comparative Study (London: James Currey, 1985); David Lan, Guns & Rain; Guerrillas & Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe (London: James Currey, 1985); Norma Kriger, ‘The Zimbabwean War of Liberation: Struggles within a Struggle’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 14, 2 (1988) 304–22; Norma Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992); David Maxwell, ‘Local Politics and the War of Liberation in North-east Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies 19, 3(1993) 361–86.

    Google Scholar 

  2. William A. Munro, The Moral Economy of the State (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1998), 112–19.

    Google Scholar 

  3. James Adams, ‘Quiescence Despite Privation: Explaining the Absence of a Farm Labourers’ Movement in Southern Illinois’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 39, 3 (1997) 550–71. The same issue also includes J. Peter Brosius, ‘Prior Transcripts, Divergent Paths: Resistance and Acquiescence to Logging in Sarawak, East Malaysia’, 468–510, comparing two discrete populations’ response to international logging operations.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Ibid., 550.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Allen F. Isaacman, ‘Peasants and Rural Social Protest in Africa’ in Frederick Cooper, Florencia Mallon et al. (eds), Confronting Historical Paradigms: Peasants, Labor, and the Capitalist World System in Africa and Latin America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993) pp. 205–6, 219–21 [originally published in African Studies Review, 33 (Sept. 1990), 1–120]; Norma Kriger, ‘The Zimbabwean War of Liberation’, 304–8, which is essentially a critique of Ranger – 74 of her 116 footnotes are solely or primarily references to Peasant Consciousness.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Paul Mosley, The Settler Economies: Studies in the Economic History of Kenya and Southern Rhodesia 1900–1963 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) p. 29.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  7. Furedi’s Mau Mau War uses it in his Introduction (pp. 6–7).

    Google Scholar 

  8. Peasant Consciousness, p. 12.

    Google Scholar 

  9. My criticisms of Ranger on comparative methodology are similar to Richard Elphick’s critique of Fredrickson. My approach uses carefully matched functional categories (squatters, rebellion) with ‘small number’ case study areas (2), and with what might be termed an analytic slice of time. See Richard Elphick, ‘A Comparative History of White Supremacy’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XIII, 3 (Winter 1983) 503–13, reviewing George Fredrickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); and Theda Skocpol, ‘Emerging Agendas and Recurrent Strategies in Historical Sociology’ in her (ed.) Vision and Method in Historical Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) pp. 356–91.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Kriger, ‘The Zimbabwean War of Liberation’, and especially chapter 1, ‘Peasant revolutions: theories and methods’, in her Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War.

    Google Scholar 

  11. See Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983). For proponents of agency see Isaacman, ‘Peasants and Rural Social Protest in Africa’ and John Lonsdale’s Introduction to Greet Kershaw, Mau Mau From Below.

    Google Scholar 

  12. ‘Men make their own history, but not spontaneously, under conditions they have chosen for themselves; rather on terms immediately existing, given and handed down to them’: from ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ in The Portable Karl Marx (New York: Viking Press, 1983) p. 287.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Robin Palmer, Land and Racial Domination in Rhodesia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977) pp. 205–13, 222–5; Paul Mosley, Settler Economies pp. 21–8; C. Youé, ‘“A Delicate Balance”: Resident Labour on Settler Farms in Kenya, until Mau Mau’, Canadian Journal of History, 22, 2 (1987) 209–28.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Land and Racial Domination p. 223. Our case study of a white district in Kenya points to the longevity of squatter residency on European farms: C. Youé and C. J. Duder, ‘Paice’s Place: Race and Politics in Nanyuki District, Kenya, in the 1920s’, African Affairs, 93, 371 (April 1994) 253–78. This was the case in South Africa also: Charles van Onselen, ‘Race and Class in the South African Countryside: Cultural Osmosis and Social Relations in the Sharecropping Economy of the South-Western Transvaal, 1900–1950’, American Historical Review, 95, 1 (Feb. 1990) 99–123.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Youé, ‘“A Delicate Balance”’, 221.

    Google Scholar 

  16. CO 533/549/4/38232, Govr. to Sec. of State, 19 Feb. 1947.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Ibid., E. M. Hyde Clarke, Labour Commissioner to Chief Sec., Nairobi, 17 Sept. 1946.

    Google Scholar 

  18. DO 35/1162/R216/1, Quarterly Review of Native Affairs, by L. Powys Cobb, Asst CNC, 21 Oct. 1946.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Mosley, Settler Economies, p. 27; Ranger, Peasant Consciousness, uses the same quote, p. 102. The Minister for African Affairs in Rhodesia reckoned 5294 families were moved in 1950 and that 4382 families was the target for 1951: East Africa and Rhodesia, 24 May 1951.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Peasant Consciousness, p. 130; Lonsdale, in return, hints at agreement, and possible reasons for why no Mau Mau in South Africa in his Conclusion in Ran Greenstein (ed.) Comparative Perspectives on South Africa (London: Macmillan – now Palgrave, 1998), pp. 293–4.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Indians in Kenya, Cmd. 1922 (1923).

    Google Scholar 

  22. M. Tamarkin, ‘Mau Mau in Nakuru’, Journal of African History, 17, 1 (1976), 128. Tamarkin’s evidence is oral testimony.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Mau Mau from Below, p. 251.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Furedi, ‘The Social Composition of the Mau Mau Movement in the White Highlands’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 1, 4(1974) 486–505; Kanogo, Squatters & the Roots of Mau Mau, chapter 5; Furedi, Mau Mau War in Perspective, chapter 3.

    Google Scholar 

  25. East Africa and Rhodesia, 4 Dec. 1952, 408, in the Papers of Michael Blundell (RH Ms. Afr. s746) 7/3.

    Google Scholar 

  26. CO 822/439, ‘Secret: Note of a Meeting Held in the Secretary of State’s Room on Monday, 15th December 1952’.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Bruce Berman, Control & Crisis in Colonial Kenya: The Dialectic of Domination (London: James Currey, 1990) pp. 348–9.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Nakuru District Annual Report, 1953, p. 2; Uasin Gishu Intelligence Report, March 1953, Kenya National Archives.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Unhappy Valley, p. 439.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Trans Nzoia Annual Report, 1952, 9.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Annual Report, 1950, Labour Officer, Eldoret, conf. in DC/UG 4/1; Uasin Gishu Intelligence Report, March 1953, DC/UG 4/2.

    Google Scholar 

  32. CO 822/505, Baring’s memorandum, ‘Movement of Kikuyu’, secret, 28 Sept. 1953.

    Google Scholar 

  33. CO 822/500, Govr. to Sec. of State, tel., 27 Oct. 1953.

    Google Scholar 

  34. ‘Interview/Discussion on the Mau Mau Emergency in Kenya with Sir Frank Loyd, Robin Wainright and Dick Wilson – 12th January 1984’ (RH Ms. Afr. s. 1915)

    Google Scholar 

  35. Hinde to Major General Hull, 11 April 1953, Hinde Papers (RH Ms. Afr. s1580), File 1.

    Google Scholar 

  36. Paul Maina, Six Mau Mau Generals (Nairobi: Gazelle Press, 1977).

    Google Scholar 

  37. The Times, 12 July 1955, 9.

    Google Scholar 

  38. Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya, p. 130; Donald Barnett and Karari Njama, Mau Mau from Within (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966) p. 377; Luise White, ‘Separating the Men from the Boys: Constructions of Gender, Sexuality and Terrorism in Central Kenya, 1939 – 1959’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 23, 1 (1990) 11: ‘ . . . by late 1953 most of the considerable intelligence security forces had obtained came from the bitter enmity between the literate and illiterate factions’.

    Google Scholar 

  39. Eric Worby, ‘Maps, Names, and Ethnic Games: The Epistemology and Iconography of Colonial Power in Northwestern Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 20, 3 (1994), 371–92; Jocelyn Alexander and Joann McGregor, ‘Modernity and Ethnicity in a Frontier Society: Understanding Differences in North-Western Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies 23, 2 (1997), 187–201.

    Google Scholar 

  40. Worby, ‘Maps, Names . . . ’, 389–96; Alexander and McGregor, ‘Modernity and Ethnicity . . . ’, 191–2.

    Google Scholar 

  41. An interesting letter from the main mission organizations in Rhodesia appeared in the Rhodesia Herald, 29 May 1942: reflecting on the plight of squatters on ‘unoccupied’ white farms and their potential eviction, they write: ‘We have felt it to be our duty to encourage the people to whom we minister not to scatter everywhere, but to move as far as possible together so that tribal units, family units, church units and school units may not be entirely disrupted’.

    Google Scholar 

  42. Peasant Consciousness, p. 67.

    Google Scholar 

  43. Peasant Consciousness, p. 31.

    Google Scholar 

  44. Ibid., 31–2.

    Google Scholar 

  45. Grey to Rhodes, 26 May 1897, cited by Palmer, ‘War and Land in Rhodesia in the 1890s’, in Bethwell Ogot (ed.), War and Society in Africa (London: Frank Cass, 1970) p. 89.

    Google Scholar 

  46. Cited by E. A. Brett, Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa: the Politics of Economic Change (London: Heinemann, 1973) p. 173.

    Google Scholar 

  47. Ranger, Peasant Consciousness, p. 138.

    Google Scholar 

  48. White Farmers in Rhodesia, 1890–1965: A History of the Marandellas District (London: Macmillan – now Palgrave, 1983) p. 122.

    Google Scholar 

  49. Victor Machingaidze notes that, at the very time the Rhodesian state is trying to relocate squatter families, the Development Coordination Commission reports the high rate of absentee landlords and untraceable ‘farmers’ with undeveloped land: ‘Agrarian Change from Above: The Southern Rhodesia Native Land Husbandry Act and African Response’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 24, 3(1991) 562.

    Google Scholar 

  50. Mosley, Settler Economies, p. 20; Palmer, Land and Racial Domination, p. 21.

    Google Scholar 

  51. Settler Economies, p. 20.

    Google Scholar 

  52. ‘A Note on the Squatter Problem’, June 1932, Rift Valley Province Daily Correspondence, PC/LAB 27/5.

    Google Scholar 

  53. DO 63/2, ‘Note of Discussion on 4th January’, in file: Southern Rhodesia Commission Report, 7 Dec. 1926.

    Google Scholar 

  54. Palmer, Land and Racial Domination, p. 199. See also Allison Shutt, ‘Purchase Area Farmers and the Middle Class of Southern Rhodesia, c. 1931–1952’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 30, 3(1997) 555–81.

    Google Scholar 

  55. Report of the Kenya Land Commission (1934), Cmd. 4556 (1933–34), X, 229, 4.

    Google Scholar 

  56. CO 533/483/16, MacMillan’s ‘Notes Suggested by Conversation with Lord Francis Scott on Problems of Kenya’, July 1937.

    Google Scholar 

  57. Charles Mortimer’s description was ‘the most useless in the country’: ‘Memo. on the History of Land Alienation . . . ’ in Mole Papers (Mss. Brit. Emp. s455), 1/5.

    Google Scholar 

  58. William R. Duggan, ‘The Native Land Husbandry Act of 1951 and the Rural African Middle Class of Southern Rhodesia’, African Affairs, 79, 315 (1980) 235.

    Google Scholar 

  59. L. Powys Jones, ‘The Native Purchase Areas of Southern Rhodesia’, Journal of African Administration, 17 (1955), 23.

    Google Scholar 

  60. DO 35/3718, Fabian Colonial Bureau to Lord Ogmore, Under-Sec. of State, 24 Jan. 1951.

    Google Scholar 

  61. Peasant Consciousness, chapter 4.

    Google Scholar 

  62. Worby, ‘Maps, Names and Ethnic Games . . . ’, 391.

    Google Scholar 

  63. Maloba, Mau Mau and Kenya, p. 12; Kershaw, ‘Mau Mau from Below’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 25, 2 (1991), 276.

    Google Scholar 

  64. ‘Extract of Mr. E. W. Bailtrop’s Report, ST 30/3, of 9/12/52’, LAB 9/328.

    Google Scholar 

  65. Mau Mau War in Perspective, pp. 75–6.

    Google Scholar 

  66. CO 822/811, Deputy Govr. to Sec. of State, saving telegram, secret, 15 Nov. 1955.

    Google Scholar 

  67. Ibid.

    Google Scholar 

  68. Ian Phimister, ‘Rethinking the Reserves: Southern Rhodesia’s Land Husbandry Act Reviewed’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 19, 2 (June 1993) 225–39. The Act coincided with the removals. Phimister argues that the rural bourgeoisie survived the Act and became an important component of nationalist opposition.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Chris Youé
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Memorial University of Newfoundland, St John’s, Canada

    Chris Youé (Professor of History) (Professor of History)

  2. Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada

    Tim Stapleton (Assistant Professor of History) (Assistant Professor of History)

Copyright information

© 2001 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Youé, C. (2001). Rebellion and Quiescence: Kenyan and Rhodesian Responses to Forced Removals in the 1950s. In: Youé, C., Stapleton, T. (eds) Agency and Action in Colonial Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230288485_11

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230288485_11

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-41796-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-230-28848-5

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation