HIST 450: Topics in African History (Spring 2023) Colonialism and Nationalism in the Making of Modern Africa Prof. Ned Bertz

“Mau Mau was the great horror story of Britain’s empire in the 1950s.” -Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 1

“Gikonyo lay on his back and stared into the darkness, every minute conscious of the heavy breathing

from the two women. Six years he had waited for this day; six years through seven detention camps had he longed for it, feeling, all the time, that life’s meaning was contained in his final return to Mumbi.

Nothing else mattered: the camps, mountains, valleys, everything could have been wiped from the face of the earth and Gikonyo would have watched this, without flinching, if he had known that he would, in the end, go back to the woman he had left behind. Little did he then think, never thought it could ever

be a return to silence. Could the valley of silence between him and the woman be now crossed?” – Ngũgĩ, A Grain of Wheat, 116

Essay #2: Due to Laulima Drop Box before class on Monday, April 24

Decolonization in Kenya was uniquely messy. The particular nature of settler colonialism gave rise to a very dirty war, and the Mau Mau conflict ravaged Kikuyu society. Not even the optimism of uhuru (independence) could resolve or dissolve the resulting tensions in Kenyan society. Scholars like David Anderson and Robert Edgerton give us an in-depth understanding of the events and outcomes of decolonization in Kenya. Capturing the mood of those times is the Kikuyu writer Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o’s brilliant novel A Grain of Wheat (1967).

This prompt asks you to write an essay analyzing the history of decolonization in Kenya:

How did the process of decolonization in Kenya create specific challenges facing the new nation at uhuru, and how does the Ngugi novel illustrate this?

Your essay should have a clearly defined argument that addresses the above question and structures your paper. Be as detailed as possible in using historical scholarship – e.g., Anderson, Edgerton, Parker & Rathbone – including numerous citations to analyze the outcomes of decolonization and the Mau Mau conflict in Kenya. Deploy ample examples from A Grain of Wheat to illustrate the processes that created the tensions in Kenyan society and the associated challenges at the time of uhuru in 1963. You should not consult or include any material from outside of class for this paper, and content taken from non-course sources will not be considered in terms of grading.

Requirements: The paper must be 5-7 typed (double-spaced) pages in length. Papers

submitted late and without a valid excuse and prior warning will receive a grade reduction. It is critical to cite all ideas and words, even paraphrases or partial sentences, which are not your own. You may use any convention of citations: parenthetical citations, footnotes, or endnotes are all acceptable. Please indent and single-space longer block quotations (over four lines). Bibliographies and cover pages are not necessary, although please give your paper a title.

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