The Motives of Mau Mau

Basil Davidson

  • Unhappy Valley by Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale
    James Currey, 224 pp, £45.00, April 1993, ISBN 0 85255 022 7
  • Mau Mau and Kenya: An Analysis of a Peasant Revolt by Wunyabari Maloba
    Indiana, 228 pp, £32.50, January 1994, ISBN 0 253 33664 3

British and American writing about Africans seems generally to suppose that its audience is interested in reading about Africans, but this supposition goes against the evidence. Distinguished writers continue to publish books that are presented as being about Africans, but are in fact about ‘us’ in Africa. While natural to an age of imperialism, this approach becomes awkward in an age (if, of course, we have got there) which may wish to read about ‘them’ in terms other than those of Eurocentric romance.

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