Word: elkinsã
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...onto reservations governed by puppet “chiefs.” Kikuyu resentment of British settlers escalated into Mau Mau, a rebellion whose adherents hacked to death about 2,000 European settlers and Kikuyu “loyalists.” While these deaths have been well-documented, Elkins?? work focuses, by contrast, on the many Kikuyu who were detained and killed by British forces in retaliation for the Mau Mau insurgency...
...Elkins?? primary accomplishment is that she makes rubbish of the official British claim that only 11,000 Mau Mau were killed in action. The embarrassed British destroyed most incriminating documents years ago, so instead Elkins sought out private collections that escaped incineration and talked to now-elderly Mau Mau adherents. Where no damning official record exists, she has analyzed population records, piecing together the number of Kikuyu missing or killed under the auspices of the British...
Invariably, Mau Mau has either been distorted by British survivors or rendered incomprehensible by anthropologists. Elkins?? work directly combats this syndrome and serves as an accessible narrative of Mau Mau, from beginning to end; in pursuit of this goal, she has created one of those rare history books which is immensely readable, even to someone who knows little about British colonial history...
Sadly, the popular aspect of Elkins?? history also takes Imperial Reckoning off-track. In an attempt to help her non-academic audience understand the Mau Mau, she uses tropes like “Nazism” for comparison’s sake and drops the word “genocide” numerous times. Eager to make this relatively unknown episode seem relevant to book-buying audiences, she has avoided using “Mau Mau” in her work’s title. Instead, she gives the out-of-context label “gulag?...
...Elkins?? inclusion of the term “gulag” in her work’s title as a description of colonial Kenya’s labor camps is similarly troubling. Professor of History Niall Ferguson has already labeled Elkins?? use of the term “wildly inappropriate,” and this criticism seems on-point. “Gulag” in Elkins?? mind appears to mean any camp system where detainees are thrust into a system of forced labor. This usage of “gulag” divorces...