David Anderson
Histories of the Hanged
The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire
A remarkable account of Britain's last
stand in Kenya . . . This is imperial
history at its very best."
—John Hope Franklin
IN "A GRIPPING NARRATIVE . . . that is all but
impossible to put down" (Joseph C. Miller), Histories
of the Hanged exposes the long-hidden colonial crimes
of the British in Kenya. This groundbreaking work
tells how the brutal war between the colonial government
and the insurrectionist Mau Mau between 1952
and 1960 dominated the final bloody decade of
imperialism in East Africa. Using extraordinary new
evidence, David Anderson puts the colonial government
on trial with eyewitness testimony from over
800 court cases and previously unseen archives. His
research exonerates the Kikuyu rebels—hardly the terrorists
they were thought to be—and reveals the
British to be brutal aggressors in a "dirty war" that
involved leaders at the highest ranks of the British
government. This astonishing piece of scholarship
portrays a teetering colonial empire in its final
phase—employing whatever military and propaganda
methods it could to preserve an order that could no
longer hold.
DAVID ANDERSON, a lecturer in African
studies at Oxford University, has appeared
on C-SPAN and NPR. He lives in England.
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