Anderson, David. "The Hidden History of an Anti-Colonial Rebellion". In Histories of the Hanged: Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire, by David Anderson, 9-53. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005.

Anderson, David. "The Hidden History of an Anti-Colonial Rebellion". In Histories of the Hanged: Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire, by David Anderson, 9-53. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005.

• Despite the promises made to Kenyans during the Second World War, no democracy was created for the African and Asian inhabitants of Kenya. The racial stratified system limited democratic rule to 29,000 White settlers, while African and Asian voices in government were limited to government-appointed representative and African chiefs (9).
• Kenyan politics of the 1920s and 1930s was dominated by complaints over the low level of African wages and demands that the 'kipande', an identity card required for work and stating previous salaries issued during World War I, be abolished. In the 1930s onward, these issues were joined by larger demands for democratic representation and access to land (10).
• By the 1950s, three blocs emerged from African debates over these issues. A conservative bloc of wealthy landed chiefs and headmen, who supported the colonial state and benefited from their position in it. They were opposed by moderate nationalists, who tended to come from an upper-class educated background and were disillusioned with inequity of British rule, and militant nationalists, who drew on the support of the landless and poor laborers (11-13).
• Although support for different groups did tend to occur on a class basis, with the wealthiest being conservative or moderate nationalists, and the poor being more militant, divisions really sprung for perceptions of the ideal Kikuyu society, especially regarding control over land and labor (13).
• Much political activity in interwar Kenya was concentrated around and developed by churches, which provided most education in the colony, and instilled pupils with a belief in progress and modernity. Churches began areas of political mobilization for Africans, especially the Kikuyu, and formed the basis for conservative politics (15).
• Although church organizations tended to provide support bases for conservative politics, the actual attendees of church schools were also moderate nationalists. The dedication to progress instilled by religious educated encouraged many young Africans to oppose unjust laws in Kenya (16).
• Early moderate nationalist agitation, organized around Harry Thuku, was mobilized around a Methodist message of good works and upright zeal. When authorities detained him for deportation to the coast in March 1922, a crowd surrounded the jail and policemen opened fire, killing 21 civilians. Despite this record, when he returned to Kikuyuland in the 1940s, he stood with other moderate nationalists against militant nationalism (16-17).
• During the 1920s, moderate nationalists and conservatives generally agreed, with differences really emerging regarding issues of chiefly control over society. Although minor issues were raised over polygamy, traditional religion, and traditional dress, a large debate only emerged over the issue of female circumcision, which moderate nationalists supported as a cultural element, claiming that the conservative chiefs were being bullied into banning it by European churches (18-19).
• Political tensions heightened towards the end of the 1920s, as Protestant churches became increasingly emphatic about the immorality of female circumcision. Hundreds of Kikuyu left church membership over the issue, and churches began directly attacking the Kikuyu Central Association [KCA] for supporting the practice in print (19-20).
• This crisis over female circumcision had long-term effects on the organization of faith in central Kenya, as many Kikuyu refused to return to European churches even after they stopped actively opposing circumcision. Africans instead founded their own churches, with associated schools, breaking the European domination on both faith and education (20).
• Land tenure in Kenya was organized along racial lines, with the country separated between African reserves, one created for each recognized tribe, and the White Highland, reserved entirely for European ownership. Africans were not allowed to own land in the White Highlands nor purchase land outside of their own reservation (21).
• Both the conservative faction, led by the chiefs, and the moderate nationalist faction, led by the KCA, recognized severe shortages of arable land available to African Kenyans as a result of racial enclosure. They advocated the return of some 60,000 acres of disputed land currently used for European settlement (21-22).
• In 1932, the combined efforts of the KCA and the conservative organization, now called the Loyal Kikuyu Patriots, succeeded in demanding that a Land Commission inspect Kenya. In 1934, however, the Commission refused to recognize claims to disputed land, instead recommending that the Kikuyu be compensated through grants of shittier land elsewhere that Europeans didn't want (21-22).
• The decision of the Land Commission had severe consequences for European rule in Kenya, persuading many loyalist chiefs of the unfairness of British rule and pushing them into the moderate nationalist camp. The decision also sparked the turn of some nationalists towards militancy, who then organized protests, public opposition to land tenure, and illegal occupation of White farmland (22-23).
• By the 1940s, around 16% of all Kikuyu were tenants on White farms. Many of these tenants had resided there since White settlement began in 1902, since Europeans frequently claimed land which was also occupied by Africans and later employed these Africans as laborers (23). Additional tenants were also recruited, however, during the 1910s to supply labor to coffee plantations in the Rift Valley in western Kenya (24).
• Considerable tensions existed between tenants and White settlers over the land rights of tenants. Originally, tenants had been recruited as tenant farmers, however during the 1920s, White settlers tried to move the relationship towards that of wage labor, removing tenant access to land rights in the process (25).
• Despite a number of assumed rights to land, especially among those tenants who had cleared their own land to make room for cultivation or who were second or third-generation immigrants, the Kenyan High Court ruled in 1925 that landlords had the right to evict any tenant at any time for any reason (25).
• Following an economic windfall from inflated agricultural commodity prices due to World War II, White farmers modernized their production techniques in the 1940s, demanding access to more land and severely limiting the rights of tenants in labor contracts. To avoid competition, contracts often limited both livestock and land holdings of tenants, resulting in the impoverishment of previously wealthy tenant communities (26).
• Facing depressed economic conditions, or the threat of expulsion altogether, over 100,000 Kikuyu tenants returned to central Kenya between 1946 and 1952. This group was both newly impoverished and much less educated than other Kikuyu, since mission schools did not have a presence in the Rift Valley (24, 26).
• The movement of Kikuyu tenants to central Kenya featured sporadic and unorganized episodes of violence against White farmers. Livestock were sometimes killed or maimed, or White-owned buildings set ablaze (26).
• Those Kikuyu who 'returned' to central Kenya were not usually welcomed, and entered into a situation already characterized by land scarcity. Many faced poverty and unemployment, new experiences for a previously wealthy sector of Kikuyu (28, 31).
• Organized opposition to the degradation of economic conditions for tenants in the Rift Valley emerged in Olenguruone, a town established to house Kikuyu resettled from tenant farms. The Kenyan government planned to organize the settlement and regulate crop production, an initiative strongly resisted by settlers, who saw the land as restitution for land lost during resettlement from the Rift Valley (27).
• The opposition to British colonial policy which developed in Olenguruone, and the oaths of loyalty and ethnic affiliation which occurred during protests, appealed to a broad section of Kikuyu society. During the 1950s, support for militant movements based on Olenguruone grew among the urban poor and displaced tenants in central Kenya (30).
• Although the Kenyan colonial government had used World War II as an excuse to ban the KCA, after the war, a new nationalist political party formed, the Kenyan African Union [KAU]. The KAU was more ethnically diverse than the KCA, although it still included precious few non-Kikuyu, and also had a larger base in urban laborers (28).
• By 1950, however, mismanagement under Jomo Kenyatta had severely damaged the KAU's prospects. It had failed to demand moderate reforms from the colonial government and had not expanded its base from educated Kikuyu towards other classes and ethnic groups (30).
• The KAU only experienced a resurgence in the 1950s, due not to Jomo Kenyatta's policies, but due to collaboration with the Muhimu. The Muhimu essentially took control of the public face of the KAU, instituted a much more militant oath, and inducted huge numbers of union members and criminals into the KAU. The organization of the KAU was affected, with militant nationalists now dominating meetings and leadership positions (38-40).
• The decision to liaison with the militant nationalists was a response to the declining popularity and relevance of the KAU, which increasing saw its political support by usurped by more militant nationalist movements. John Westley Mbiyu and Peter Koinange, two major KAU leaders, considered cooperation a good way to restore the party's relevance. Both this decision and the subsequent militant domination of the KAU marginalized Jomo Kenyatta (41-42).
• Although it recognized the growing need for land among the Kikuyu during the 1940s and 1950s, the colonial government had limited viable options. The decision of the 1934 Land Commission had precluded transferring White land to Africans, a move also opposed to White settlers. They considered forcing chiefs to give up personal holdings, but this would threaten the economic interests of the chiefs, a major support base for the colonial government (31-32).
• The colonial government therefore decided in the 1940s to promote modern agricultural practices as a solution to land scarcity and overpopulation. They passed a number of new bylaws on agricultural practices and gave chiefs significantly more power to enforce them (32).
• There was massive African resistance to the imposition of new farming practices and the banning of traditional agricultural practices, failure to comply with which often resulted to large fines or punishments. Chiefs often used forced labor to accomplish these projects, resulting in violence against chiefs or large rural strikes (32-34).
• Nairobi was the center of Kenyan militancy by the 1940s, as massive Black immigration during the period in the eastern district of the town created an atmosphere of instability and concentrated poverty. Large numbers of unemployed young men, many of them WWII veterans, became involved in criminal gangs as well as radical political activities. Militant nationalists also drew support from labor unions, dominated both the spectrum of lower-class Nairobi politics (35-36).
• Police forces essentially stopped patrolling eastern Nairobi by the 1940s, leading to the consolidation of criminal gangs as providers of social services and basic protection. These gangs were mainly Kikuyu, and often targeted Black non-Kikuyu businesses for robbery or protection. They also engaged in illegal trade and facilitated a large black market economy (36).
• Militant nationalist politics in Nairobi coalesced around the Anake a forti [Group of Forty],  a Kikuyu gang mainly comprised of WWII veterans who had been excluded from economic advancement by conservative chiefs. They controlled a major black market in eastern Nairobi, and used protection rackets to fund the militant activities of labor unions and anti-government protesters in Olenguruone (36-37).
• The actual organized gang structure of the Group of Forty had broken up by 1949, but many former members were involved in the Muhimu, small cells of militant nationalists who supported anti-colonial resistance in the Rift Valley, eastern Nairobi, and Central Kenya, and stockpiled weapons and ammunition (37-38).
• The domination of the main KAU organization structures by the Muhimu by 1951 following the central party conference allowed the group access to large reserves of manpower and funds through the party organization, which was transformed into a platform for organizing nationalist violence (40-41).
• The inclusion of many criminal elements with the Muhimu, and by extension the KAU, ruined the discipline of the movement, as former criminals exploited their positions of power to extort money from the population. Their behavior sometimes matched criminal gangs who occasionally stockpiled weapons and assassinated colonial figures in accordance with militant nationalist goals (42-43).
• Labor activism and militancy in Nairobi had deep connections to the militant nationalist movement, especially the Muhimu. Workers victimized by anti-union tactics often joined militant nationalist movements, and unions provided logistics and locations for militant nationalist meetings and their initiative to stockpile arms (38-39).
• The mixture of KAU and Muhimu activities from 1950 onward led to an increase in organized violence, particularly to enforce political discipline. In the Rift Valley, farm laborers were expected to support Muhimu activities and donate their wages to the KAU; failure to comply resulted in beatings or other violence. Similar intimidation was practiced in Central Kenya (43-44).
• The colonial government first noticed the activities of the Muhimu in Summer 1950, when authorities in the White Highlands began reporting systemic violence and intimidation of farm laborers by the 'Mau Mau'. In August 1950, the colonial government banned the 'Mau Mau society', without a clear understand of what that group compromised (44).
• By 1952, violence organized by the Muhimu had become focused against the colonial regime and its supporters, beginning in Central Kenya with a series of arsons against the property of pro-government figures and White farmers. Attacks targeted chiefs, headmen, and government employees, but also those who had testified in court or informed the police about Muhimu crimes (45).
• These attacks succeeded to destroying the colonial government's ability to function in many areas of Central Kenya, as neither private citizen, church associations, nor even chiefs were willing to cooperate with the government against Muhimu for fear of retaliation (45).
• The government response to lack of cooperation against the Muhimu in Central Kenya was to impose, against the advice of local officials, collective punishment on non-cooperative population in the forms of fines. This tendency grew as the Emergency continued (46).
• The violence of the Mau Mau rebellion intensified in Spring 1952, following a government campaign organized by Louis Leakey which organized chiefs to perform 'counter-oathing' ceremonies to demonstrate community resolve against the Muhimu. Headmen and police informants began to be murdered in Central Kenya, as well as men who refused to take the KAU oath. Police were unable to solve these murders, as witnesses were either killed or intimidated into silence (47-48).
• The police response to widespread witness intimidation was to resort to the use of beating and torture to extract confessions from suspected Mau Mau members. While police violence was sporadic in 1952 and 1953, torture during police interrogation was to become widespread by the mid-1950s (49).
• By Summer 1952, the Commissioner of Police in Kenya estimated that around 10% of the Kikuyu population had taken, willing or under coercion, the KAU oath. He also noted that it was near universal in prisons, with most convicts joined the Mau Mau upon release (52).