Causal Antecedents of Kenya's Mau Mau Rebellion
As described by David Anderson (2), "Kenya's explosion into struggle came just as the old European empires were running out of steam. By 1952, the year in which the Mau Mau emergency began, the once might imperial powers were contracting." Throughout Africa, the colonies once occupied and dominated by white Europeans were undergoing often quite dramatic changes among which nationalization and a return to indigenous African rule were key. The process of decolonization was nowhere in Africa particularly easy. In Kenya, the emergence of the Mau Mau signaled the introduction of a period of violence that was directed not only against the country's white settlers but also against those privileged African tribal elites. In this essay, an investigation of the causes of the Mau Mau rebellion will be undertaken.
It is important to recognize that the main support for the Mau Mau came from so-called squatter tenants, most of whom were from the Kikuyu tribe, but were also drawn from the Emba and Meru who had been expelled from white owned farms in the fertile highlands north of Nairobi (Shillington 391). The white settlers "sought to prevent their African 'squatter' tenants from becoming successful peasant farmers who might compete with the white 'farmers' themselves. They wanted to ensure that the only Africans remaining in the fertile 'white highlands' were those who were entirely dependent upon white 'farmers' for their very low wages" (Shillington 391). Large numbers of predominantly Kikuyu "squatters" had either been evicted from these highlands in the 1930s or were forced into dry resettlement areas or overcrowded reserves while others had moved to the urban area of Nairobi in search of work. This displacement generated enormous tensions within Kenyan society and led many of the Kikuyu to take up arms against the white colonials (Lonsdale 317).
Thus, as Anderson (4) s...