Mau Mau and Nationhood — (2003)

Arms, Authority, and Narration

Edited by John Lonsdale and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo

"A thousand words can never do justice to this tremendous collection, so I will state at the outset that it is a must read."

Cynthia Brantley — in American Historical Review

Fifty years after the declaration of the state of emergency, Mau Mau still excites argument and controversy, not least in Kenya itself. Mau Mau and Nationhood is a collection of essays providing the most recent thinking on the uprising and its aftermath.

The work of well-established scholars as well as of young researchers with fresh perspectives, Mau Mau and Nationhood achieves a multilayered analysis of a subject of enduring interest. According to Terence Ranger, Emeritus Rhodes Professor, Oxford, "In some ways the historiography of Mau Mau is a supreme example not only of ambiguity and complexity, but also of redemption of a topic once thought incapable of rational analysis."