Caroline Elkins is an assistant professor of history at Harvard University. Conversant in Swahili and some Kikuyu, she has spent nearly a decade traveling and working in rural Africa. She and her research were the subjects of a 2002 BBC documentary entitled "Kenya: White Terror." This is her first book. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Advance praise for "Imperial Reckoning: "
"Caroline Elkins has written an important book that can change our
understanding not just of Africa but of ourselves. Through
exhaustive research in neglected colonial archives and intrepid
reporting among long-forgotten Kikuyu elders in Kenya's Rift
Valley, Elkins has documented not just the true scale of a huge and
harrowing crime -- Britain's ruthless suppression of the Mau Mau
rebellion -- but also the equally shocking concealment of that
crime and the inversion of historical memory."
--Bill Berkeley, author of The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe
and Power in the Heart of Africa
"On the basis of the most painstaking research, Caroline Elkins has
starkly illuminated one of the darkest secrets of late British
imperialism. She has shown how, even when they profess the most
altruistic of intentions, empires can still be brutal in their
response to dissent by subject peoples. We all need reminding of
that today."
--Niall Ferguson, Professor of History, Harvard University, and
Senior Research Fellow, Jesus College, Oxford; author of "Colossus:
The Price of America's Empire" and "Empire: The Rise and Demise of
the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power"
"In the 1950s, Mau Mau provided the Western world with photographic
evidence of what Africa and Africans "were like": savage,
bloodthirsty, and in need of British civilization. Imperial
Reckoning shows us how these images neglected to show the brutality
and savagery being committed against the Kenyan Kikuyu people
detained by the British. Caroline Elkins fills out the images,
tells the rest of the story, and corrects the record in this
masterful book."
-- Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the
Humanities, Harvard University
"Rarely does a book come along that transforms the world's
understanding of a country and its past by bringing to light
buried, horrifying truths and redrawing central contours of
itsg
Advance praise for "Imperial Reckoning:
"Caroline Elkins has written an important book that can change our
understanding not just of Africa but of ourselves. Through
exhaustive research in neglected colonial archives and intrepid
reporting among long-forgotten Kikuyu elders in Kenya's Rift
Valley, Elkins has documented not just the true scale of a huge and
harrowing crime -- Britain's ruthless suppression of the Mau Mau
rebellion -- but also the equally shocking concealment of that
crime and the inversion of historical memory."
--Bill Berkeley, author of The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe
and Power in the Heart of Africa
"On the basis of the most painstaking research, Caroline Elkins has
starkly illuminated one of the darkest secrets of late British
imperialism. She has shown how, even when they profess the most
altruistic of intentions, empires can still be brutal in their
response to dissent by subject peoples. We all need reminding of
that today."
--Niall Ferguson, Professor of History, Harvard University, and
Senior Research Fellow, Jesus College, Oxford; author of "Colossus:
The Price of America's Empire and "Empire: The Rise and Demise of
the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power
"In the 1950s, Mau Mau provided the Western world with photographic
evidence of what Africa and Africans "were like": savage,
bloodthirsty, and in need of British civilization. Imperial
Reckoning shows us how these images neglected to show the brutality
and savagery being committed against the Kenyan Kikuyu people
detained by the British. Caroline Elkins fills out the images,
tells the rest of the story, and corrects the record in this
masterful book."
-- HenryLouis Gates, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the
Humanities, Harvard University
"Rarely does a book come along that transforms the world's
understanding of a country and its past by bringing to light
buried, horrifying truths and redrawing central contours of its
image. With voluminous evidence, Caroline Elkins exposes the long
suppressed crimes and brutalities that democratic Britain and
British settlers willingly perpetrated upon hundreds of thousands
of Africans -- truths that will permit no one of good faith to
continue to accept the mythologized account of Britain's colonial
past as merely a "civilizing mission." If you want to read one book
this year about the catastrophic consequences of racism, about the
cruelty of those who dehumanize others, or about the crimes that
ideologically besotted people - including from western democratic
countries -- can self-righteously commit, "Imperial Reckoning is
that book."
--Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of "Hitler's Willing Executioners:
Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust and recipient of Germany's
Democracy Prize
"Given the number and nature of the atrocities that filled the 20th
century, the degree of brutality and violence perpetrated by
British settlers, police, army and their African loyalist
supporters against the Kikuyu during the Mau Mau period should not
be surprising. Nor, perhaps, the fact that the British government
turned a blind eye, and later covered them up. What is surprising,
however, is that it has taken so long to document the whole ghastly
story-this is what makes Caroline Elkins's disturbing and
horrifying account so important and memorable."
--Caroline Moorehead, author of "Human Cargo: A Journey
AmongRefugees and "Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life
""Imperial Reckoning is an incredible piece of historical
sleuthing. The author has reconstructed the story that British
officialdom almost succeeding in suppressing. Her sources are the
Mau Mau fighters and sympathizers whom the British detained in
concentration camps during the 1950s. Her interviews with the
survivors of this British 'gulag' are a labor of love and
courage-impressive in their frankness and deep emotional content as
well as properly balanced between men and women, colonial officials
and Mau Mau detainees. Caroline Elkins tells a story that would
never have made it into the historical record had she not
persevered and collected information from the last generation of
Mau Mau detainees alive to bear witness to what happened."
--Robert Tignor, Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary
History, Princeton University
Ask a Question About this Product More... |