Joe W.
>From: uvj at vsnl.com
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
>Subject: [lbo-talk] Mau Mau and the bodysnatchers
>Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2005 21:18:26 +0500
>
>Economist.com
>
>British colonial history
>
>Mau Mau and the bodysnatchers
>
>Dec 29th 2004
>
>How not to run an empire
>
>Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire
>By David Anderson
>Norton; 320 pages; $25.95.
>Weidenfeld & Nicolson; £20
>
>Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of the End of Empire in Kenya
>By Caroline Elkins
>Henry Holt; 496 pages; $27.50. Published in Britain as "Britain's Gulag";
>Jonathan Cape; £20
>
>THE common image of the Mau Mau fighter is hard to erase: dirty, sullen and
>intransigent, with hair matted into dreadlocks from his months on the run
>in Kenya's equatorial forests. From the start, Mau Mau was cast as a
>throwback from a dark and primitive past, with its blood oaths and its
>disembowellings. Not since the Black Hole of Calcutta did a single phrase
>so instantly conjure up the forces of evil that Britain's civilising
>mission abroad was supposed to be doing its best to overcome. Elspeth
>Huxley, the white settlers' literary spokesman, wrote in 1957 that Mau Mau
>was the yell from the swamp.
>http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3518628
>
>
>
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