LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Mau Mau Uprising: Mau Maus
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Mau Maus is the name of a vicious street gang in New York during the 1950s. The film, The Cross and the Switchblade covered the origins of its most famous leader, Nicky Cruz. Its name was featured in a Spike Lee film, Bamboozled in 2000.
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The Mau-Mau uprising (1952-60) remains a controversial conflict, waged by warriors about whom many myths have been formed, but little truth has been written. Condemned by history as a brutal rag-tag force engaged in oath-taking, cannibalism and witchcraft, the military activities of the Mau-Mau have long been overlooked. Although their skill, organization and unique motivation forced the British government to undertake the longest airlift in military history, and to deploy extensive force at a cost of almost £60 million, before it could claim victory. This book reveals the real men and women behind the Mau-Mau; the truth behind the oaths that bound them together; and how they became a powerful force, paving the way for Kenya's independence.
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The education of Caroline Elkins began in 1995, when she decided to write a doctoral dissertation on the 80,000 Mau Mau detained during the 1952-58 state of emergency. Knowing that three different government departments had followed the detainees, she expected to find 240,000 files in the British archives -- but found none. Even the Kenya archives yielded only a few hundred files, and the surviving records were duplicitous.
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The Mau Mau Freedom Fighters waged a guerrilla war for eight years (1952-1960) against their British colonial rulers, which became known as the Mau Mau Uprising. The Mau Mau sought to win back their land and independence. Read more
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In 1956, the charismatic Mau Mau leader, Dedan Kimathi, was wounded and captured. Kimathi was an intriguing figure, a self-styled 'field marshal', who maintained discipline through the gun and the garrotte. He always carried with him the Bible and a copy of Napoleon's Book of Charms, which he used as an oracle. He was hanged in January 1957, despite having converted to Catholicism. His death brought an end to organized Mau Mau resistance.
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To cut through the systematic destruction and distortion of documentary evidence about the Mau Mau emergency, Elkins set out in search of its survivors. Her ambition in Imperial Reckoning was to shift the searchlight from the Mau Mau to the British, and she has succeeded spectacularly. In contrast, Anderson's Histories of the Hanged relies on more conventional written documentation, mainly surviving court records. Not surprisingly, his findings by and large confirm the official estimates of Mau Mau deaths.
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