‘Constituencies of Control’ – Collective Punishments in Kenya’s Mau Mau Emergency, 1952–55

ABSTRACT

Between 1952 and 1955, British Administrators in Central Kenya made wide use of livestock seizures and monetary fines known as collective punishments to penalise disloyal communities during the Mau Mau rebellion. Authorities were supported in these efforts by local collaborators drawn from the same communities as the insurgents, known as loyalists, through their support for the appropriateness and familiarity of these punishments. Based primarily on new archival material found in the controversial Hanslope disclosure, this article outlines the history of collective punishment, stresses the importance of the practice to the maintenance of localised control and argues that while interpersonal violence engendered fear, collective punishment alongside wider repertoires of coercion were the most immediate daily manifestation of dominaton. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the Kenya case for our broader understanding of everyday colonial control.

KEYWORDS:

• Colonialism
• control
• counter-insurgency
• East Africa
• Kenya
• Mau Mau
• migrated archive
• violence

Standing some 200 yards from the Githakwa Kikuyu Guard post where a double murder had occurred the evening before, the District Commissioner of Nyeri, O.E.B Hughes, addressed a crowd of assorted villagers in search of some answers. The basic facts of the case were simple. An ambush had transpired in broad daylight leaving the bodies of two men, sub-Chief Kimburu and his driver, Shadrack Muchemi, discarded on the road and left unreported for 14 h after the incident. Not only was no word passed to authorities about those responsible, but no information was given about any gang being present in the location prior to the event.

Despite the public location and brazen nature of the attack, when Hughes questioned the assembled masses the people at Githakwa all fell silent.¹ Left with little other recourse, Hughes ordered the local District Officer, H.S.B Thacker, to conduct a collective punishment of the location in the form of a seizure of livestock. In his report he made his reasoning clear, ‘I strongly recommend approval of this punishment which is at this time the only effective means available for the officer on the spot of restoring respect for Government and shattered morale’.²

In the battle for control of Central Kenya in the first years of the Mau Mau emergency from 1952, collective punishment would be the tool with which officials would try to assert their domination over the defiant Kenyan countryside. Yet, in recent years, influenced as much by events in the media and court room as elsewhere, the field of Mau Mau studies has overlooked such forms of more wide-ranging coercion for a preoccupation with notions of interpersonal violence. Reproduction of lurid tales of abuses and mistreatment which occurred in the screening camps and detention centres throughout Central Kenya has served as ammunition for wider imperial debates but has left the field conceptually deficient of new analysis. Even where new works have deviated from this trend, such as Julie MacArther’s edited collection on Dedan Kimathi and Emily Baughan’s enquiry into humanitarian organisations in Mau Mau, analysis of the local and quotidian is still side-lined for studies of well-known figures and high politics.³ This article aims to present a corrective to this trend, in offering a rereading of the Mau Mau rebellion which places the localised and everyday collective punishment firmly as its focus, locating the practice within the wider repertoire of colonial coercive controls, of which violence was only one factor.

In April 2011, a historic hearing in London concerning atrocities by the British Administration in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion was to bring debates about censorship, historic injustice and Britain’s imperial past firmly to the fore.⁴ A test case involving five Kenyan pensioners reached Britain’s High Court with claims of the wide use of abuses and terror in the British counter-insurgency campaign. Despite the Foreign Office giving a sworn undertaking to the court that no files relevant to the case on Kenya were being withheld, historian David Anderson acting as an expert witness for the Kenyans’ lawyers was able to draw on a forty-year old Foreign Office minute which allowed him to conclude the government was withholding some 1500 files which would occupy around 100 feet of shelf space.⁵ It was at this juncture that Edward Inglett, Kenya Desk officer with the FCO, informed the records management staff at Hanslope Park that he would be making a personal visit to their stores to search for himself.⁶ A few days later, and before his arrival, the staff at Hanslope announced they had found the ‘missing’ documents, revealing a cache so voluminous that it dwarfed Anderson’s initial estimates.⁷

The revelation that tens of thousands of previously unknown papers that had been, purposefully or otherwise, hidden from public record at an FCO site in Hanslope Park quickly became an international story and generated significant excitement in scholarly circles.⁸ The question which unsurprisingly focused the attention of so many historians of empire was just what implications this new resource could have on our understanding of Britain’s imperial past, Anderson himself referring to it as a ‘potential treasure trove of documents’ and Richard Drayton going as far to suggest ‘these collections have the potential to force historians to revise their explanations of such major diplomatic questions as the partition of Africa, and the origins of the first and second world wars.’.⁹ Yet, since being made publicly available following the trial in 2013, scholarship related to the so-called ‘migrated archive’ has been somewhat narrow in focus.

Rather than be primarily used for the nuances of its content, a significant weight of research has concentrated on the concept of ‘hidden histories’ and the implication of steps taken to obscure Britain’s imperial past. Anthony Badger, the historian tasked with review and transfer of the archive to the public domain, has informed a field of scholarship which has taken this ‘legacy of suspicion’ as its focus.¹⁰ Known colloquially as Operation Legacy, it is the concept of the migrated archive rather than its contents which inform questions of British government policy on archival destruction and concealment during the period of decolonisation.¹¹ Caroline Elkins’ article, Looking Beyond Mau Mau, again concentrates less on content in discussion of the Hanslope trial and the concept of archiving violence. In doing so it instead argues for the need to look beyond the archive, thinking about what is missing from the record and finding alternative sources of data. For Elkins, the disclosure of the migrated archive acted to vindicate her earlier work Britain’s Gulag, which in detailing the violence of Mau Mau detention camps received criticism for a methodological approach which relied heavily on often anonymous oral histories for its most inflammatory claims.¹²

Indeed, in the case of Mau Mau, where the migrated archive has latterly been used for its contents, this has largely been in extracting lurid details which confirm long-held suspicions about instances of abuse and maltreatment or add greater detail to this knowledge.¹³ David Anderson has used the archive to expand on Home Guard violence in detailing colonial measures to assuage fears of prosecution through amnesty and impunity offered to loyalist Africans as part of Mau Mau surrender orders. Additionally, with Julianne Weis, he has used the disclosure to examine the widespread pattern of sexual violence and rape enacted by agents of the colonial state during the conflict.¹⁴ In both of these cases, in part owing to the focus of the trial and availability of sources, it is again acts of interpersonal violence rather than wider repertoires of control which have engaged Mau Mau scholarly study.

A traditional elite focus in imperial histories, typified in the British documents at the end of empire project; combined with a Kenyan nationalist story built around concepts of colonial violence, has left inquiry into quotidian and non-violent means of coercion side-lined in Mau Mau historiography. Yet, while there can be no doubt that interpersonal violence is fundamental to colonialism, it remains but one of a wide repertoire of incumbent responses to challenge; along with actions such as curfews, revocation of trading licences and limitations on movement, in the maintenance of localised control. While violence should not be discounted, it is only by moving past this preoccupation that we can continue to expand our understanding of how colonial rule functioned in the everyday. Thus, this article takes as its focus a less headline-grabbing aspect of parochial rule detailed within the Hanslope disclosure, collective punishments. In doing so, the article examines how the creation and application of punitive controls in the Mau Mau rebellion was disordered, hand to mouth and largely reactionary in no small part because of the localised and bottom-up composition of provincial control. From this perspective, this article explores the migrated archive in relation to debates about the chaotic nature of empire and the decentralisation of power, suggesting the need for a more considered view of control in that while violence can cause fear, it is punitive regulations that exert dominance.

Critically, in the hostile atmosphere of Britain’s present dispute over its imperial legacy as issues such as ‘Rhodes must fall’ become a lightning rod of controversy within Britain’s ensuing ‘culture war’, this article offers a sober and nuanced intervention which looks to the archive and sources in building its narrative.¹⁵ In the current discord, as public debate on imperial history increasingly vacillates between unproductive discourse on ‘pride vs. shame’ and ‘good vs. bad’, scholarly standards of evidence and integrity remain all important. This article makes use of sources for Central Kenya held within the Hanslope disclosure, to demonstrate how empire is coercive beyond the major debating points of massacre and death, of which Mau Mau is often cited as prime example. It is through rigorous historical method based in the archives, rather than tendentious popular histories, that we may discover the complexities of domination that cannot be accounted for by balance sheet histories. The diverse migrated archive has been used to unearth a litany of new information on Kenya, from its internationalism in the 1950s to decolonisation and its place in the Cold War.¹⁶ Yet perhaps a symptom of the court case surrounding the disclosure, for Mau Mau the conceptual imagination to look to these sources for what we do not know, rather than confirming what we do, has been missing. In moving past this inertia in Mau Mau historiography, and mindful of current debates, this article aims to demonstrate the important place considered archival research still holds in the study of imperial history to ensure it is evidential method rather than synthetic narrative which dictate our studies.

Before moving on to the main argument, a number of considerations are in order. First, it should be noted that scholarship on Mau Mau has insofar largely been focused on the violence precisely because of the unparalleled brutality with which the counter-insurgency campaign operated.¹⁷ In shifting emphasis, this article in no way aims to downplay the significance and scale of the violence present in Kenya, but rather place it in the wider context of dominance. In doing so, this article draws attention to how colonial control operated in the everyday. References to these wider repertoires of coercion in Mau Mau historiography, while not uncommon, has been generally treated as superficial and marginal detail to narratives of violence.¹⁸ Bruce Berman’s study of an earlier period of colonisation in Kenya argues that ‘control was maintained through the use of lesser levels of coercion contained within the routine “legal” sanction of the colonial state.’¹⁹ This article builds off of this general assessment in demonstrating that rather than lose significance during the increasingly violent emergency period, collective punishment emerged as a vital tool for control because of its wide applicability to varying local conditions. Thus, this article will demonstrate that while the continuum of colonial responses to challenge was complex and multi-faceted, wider repertoires of colonial domination have been underplayed given the singular position of violence within Mau Mau histories and Kenya’s decolonisation narrative.

Second, in making use of the migrated archive, this article benefits from the use of documents which were previously unavailable to scholars of Mau Mau. In addressing the absence of expansive literature on the use of collective punishments in the conflict, the article does therefore not aim to suggest this as an oversight in the historiography but rather as a symptom of concealment.²⁰ As David Anderson makes clear, those files relating to collective punishment were not made available to the Prosecution team in their enquiries during the trial, thus the absence of this detail from initial FCO 141 accounts dealing specifically with violence and abuses which gave rise to the court case is logical.²¹ The expansive disclosures on Kenya and Malaya within FCO 141 document a litany of coercive practices from undue revocation of trading licences, curfews and forced labour, to seizure of land, detention, and punitive taxation. The placement of these documents alongside those of explicit accounts of interpersonal violence within the migrated archive exposes that while these wider repertoires of control have been underemphasised in imperial historiography, they were considered likewise necessary to keep hidden. As such, in bringing focus to collective punishment, this article serves to build on the foundation of interpersonal violence histories in demonstrating that it was the complementary and often symbiotic nature of these continuum responses which acted to exert dominance.

Third, it should be noted that when working with sources from a disclosure where it is commonly accepted that many papers were burnt, dropped at sea, or otherwise intentionally destroyed, that inconsistencies may exist in the record. As Shohei Sato has noted, ‘Operation Legacy’, as it became known, ‘was conducted in a largely bottom-up fashion’, meaning those documents retained for transfer and those sent to be destroyed were primarily dictated on the ground.²² Differentiation of the individual worth of these documents was therefore also contingent on local character. In this respect, the archive acts to further represent the localised and chaotic nature of imperial structures. Even if the extent of collective punishments may be obfuscated by these potential discrepancies, the localised nature of both punishment and concealment still offers key insight into the machinations of control at play in the Districts of Central Kenya.

This article offers a new reading of quotidian control in Mau Mau, placing collective punishment firmly at the centre. It begins by placing the practice in its historical context within Kenya Colony, focusing especially on the development of communal punishments, unfamiliar to European conceptualisations of individualised justice. It demonstrates how this form of justice had roots in colonial ethno-psychology which strived to define African communities by virtue of racially charged commonalities.²³ Collective punishment, it is argued, thrived in this context because it reflected those generalised qualities making it widely fit-for purpose.

A second section explores how this situation changed with the onset of the emergency. Particular attention is paid to the Kikuyu concept of ‘Blood Money’ and the co-optation of ‘traditions’ to give legitimacy to the expansion of collective punishments.²⁴ The section emphasises the role played by loyalist Kikuyu in justifying the use and development of coercive measures. The connection between the loyalist and the local administrator, supporting the position and authority of one another, it is reasoned, allowed for coercive practice to take hold in the provinces of Kenya. Both Branch and Anderson have explored this connection in different ways with regards to Home Guard violence during the conflict, in what has been termed by David Anderson, the ‘loyalist bargain’.²⁵ In Defeating Mau Mau, Dan Branch challenges the popular notion that these ‘loyalists’ who opposed Mau Mau were self-interested traitors or Christian elites, instead that most of the people who sided with the government were motivated by personal and local concerns which were fluid and changing. What is underplayed in Branch’s analysis is consideration of the steps taken by the Provincial Administration to support and cultivate this relationship before the introduction of the non-combative counter-insurgency in 1954. This article will do this by looking at how control in the Districts of Central Kenya in the early years of the emergency (1952–1955) was managed and negotiated through this relationship, particularly in the considered use of collective punishments.

These connections, termed hereafter as ‘Constituencies of Control’, were the vehicle through which the colonial state claimed legitimacy for the suitability of their action during the emergency campaign. As loyalism became a defining facet of colonial identification alongside tribal and ethnic classification, participation within ‘Constituencies of Control’ offered loyalists access to the benefits of the state, as well as protection from those sanctions meted out against those deemed ‘other’.²⁶ In testing these allegiances, it is argued, collective punishment played a vital and under-researched role in breaking the Mau Mau silence, by matching insurgent intimidation with the prospect of economic hardship and removing ‘fence-sitting’ as a feasible option.²⁷ In doing so, this section challenges the narrative suggested by Branch, Anderson and others that it was the improved security situation along with escalating violence which had the most defining effect on Kikuyu allegiances. ²⁸ Instead, that disloyalty was given a tangible cost that many in the Districts of Central Kenya simply could not afford to pay.

This article latterly examines how collective punishment changed during the emergency, focusing particularly on the rise of collective fines. Quotidian punishments in the Mau Mau rebellion were neither static nor unchanging, with their emphasis and direction following larger trends in the conflict. The growth of collective fines in mid-1954, in-line with the non-combative counter-insurgency campaign, has received curiously little scholarly attention.²⁹ As the period widely considered to be the turning point of the emergency for the Kenyan Administration, this change, it is argued, was a considered push from Provincial Officials to maintain powerful coercive controls in accord with the changing complexion of Kikuyu society.³⁰ The Administrations’ ability to maintain a monopoly on coercion was essential to fulfilment of their role within their ‘Constituencies of Control’. The article ultimately concludes by suggesting that analysis of wider repertoires of coercion can be far more revealing of the inherently sinister nature of colonialism, due to the wide remit of localised agency that the chaotic and ad hoc structures of colonial control afforded even the most junior of Administrators.

Origins of Collective Punishment in Kenya

From the earliest years of colonial government in Kenya, regulations provided for collective punishments in the form of fines against communities for offences of the individual. Collective Punishment Ordinance (1909) and Stock and Produce Theft Ordinance (1913) were introduced to combat the persistent policing problem of cattle rustling. The latter made thieves liable to pay a hefty fine of a minimum of ten times that to the value of the stock stolen, in addition to a prison sentence of between one to five years. ³¹ Importantly, this fine could be levied against the criminal’s family and wider community, if they were unable to pay this themselves. In cases where it was suspected that Africans had hindered the investigation of a theft, or had knowingly harboured the criminal or their loot, then Collective Punishment Ordinance (1909) could be used in conjunction to levy punishment. ³² In essence, not long after colonisation, collective punishment was established as a tool of control in the daily prosecution of offenders.

The Kenya Administration’s reasoning for pursuing such a strong and robust punishment for the theft of stock was due to a belief that there was a sense of honour among Africans in the occupation of cattle raiding if this was against members of different communities. As such it was considered vital that action be taken to change this perception and create a public opposition towards it. ³³ This assertion, that a sense of collective responsibility needed to be fashioned in the African reserves, was instrumental in the justification of collective punishments over the coming half-century, but additionally is illustrative of colonial practice which reified the group above the individual in administration of ‘the African’.³⁴

Convictions over racially charged rationalisations of African psychology had roots both in left wing paternalist European opinion and the determination of conservative settler communities to defend practices of white supremacy.³⁵ Work to find explanations of these supposed differences in colonial officialdom did so by investigation into facets of African identity used as signifiers of collective traits. Informed both from colonial pseudo-psychology and by practicalities of administration over diverse peoples, African populations were conceptualised and divided by defined classifications such as tribe, ethnicity and, as will be demonstrated in this article, loyalty.³⁶ This has been termed by Megan Vaughan as ‘unitization’, that it was the group, rather than the individual, which were supposed to hold distinctive psychologies and bodies. ³⁷ As a notion, group classification in Kenya, as with elsewhere in empire, played on ingrained racial and ethnic stereotypes, and was reflected in the numerous varied societal and codified ways.³⁸

In practice, unitisation of the peoples of Kenya was not solely ethnic, but conditional upon other factors of demarcation in the practicalities of administration. Location was of principal importance among these. Areas and Districts, as well as the people within them, were conceived and dealt with in varied ways depending on the actions, or perceived loyalties of, the individuals who resided there and the characteristics of the colonial officer responsible. This supposed regional variation was the basis upon which the Provincial Administration defended their need for autonomy.³⁹ A system built on the intricacies of local contexts was naturally punctuated by difference. The diverse pressures and minutiae of administration at a local level necessitated a form of unitisation beyond that of grouping based on ethnicity to include character judgements from those District Officials thought best placed to make them. Reliant far more heavily on nebulous designation of ‘good vs. bad’, amenability and willingness to comply with the instruction of the local officialdom became a definable, and importantly punishable, trait.⁴⁰

This highly disaggregated approach to local controls fit neatly in-step with collective punishments. In the absence of an extensive administrative system at a District level, collective punishments operated as an effective short-cut to control, as much in its capacity as a deterrent than as a punitive action.⁴¹ In viewing individual crimes as acts of collective guilt, the colonial state was encouraging localities to police themselves. Essentially, dissuading further offences and work for the colonial officer was preferred to individual accountability. In instances when the state was forced to intervene, legislation supported the continued notion of collective responsibility. The introduction of the Tribal Police Ordinance in the 1930s allowed for the imposition of a collective fine against a trouble community for the cost of police patrols in that area.⁴² It should be noted, that despite limitations on each of these ordinances requiring strict investigation procedures and prior approval of senior officials before prosecutions could be carried out, the threat of pre-Mau Mau collective punishments exerted significant pressure on African communities. African chiefs and headmen were made to suffer the brunt of this, as the men tasked with providing the information about criminals operating in their locations as well as any stolen stock to authorities. The division of policing was such that the jurisdiction of the Kenya Police was restricted to European areas, while the District Administration had the authority for the policing of the reserves.⁴³ Failure therefore to supply satisfactory information or assistance could lead to collective punishments levied against entire locations. This created a significant social tension which could only be appeased through the guarantees of security provided by administrators as part of their ‘Constituencies of Control’. As the onset of Mau Mau brought this security into question, collective punishments and the ‘Constituencies’ which underscored them would undergo far more rapid and structural change.

‘Blood Money’ and the Onset of the Emergency

On 12th November 1952, Wambugu Mathangani, by then a retired octogenarian some decades removed from his time as Paramount Chief of the Kikuyu, sat in the First-Class Magistrates court in Nyeri to offer testimony at the inquiry of a property seizure in Thegenge location.⁴⁴

I have seen cattle seized before in the past, by the Kikuyu themselves. If someone had been murdered and nobody would say who had done it, we used to seize all their property; and then if they came forward, they got it back, but if they still refused to say, they lost it. We used to do this before the Europeans came. Really the District Commissioner is doing what we would have done.⁴⁵

Wambugu, a loyalist since the earliest days of colonisation, was speaking of the Kikuyu custom of ‘Blood Money’, the payment of restitution to the family of a victim from the individual, family or community deemed culpable for the crime.⁴⁶ ‘Blood Money’ was a reflection of Kikuyu concepts of justice which considered infringements as personal offences between parties, as opposed to European penal traditions which customarily viewed crimes primarily as against the state. The invention and use of forms of native custom, real or imagined, have been studied in works by Terrence Ranger and Mahmood Mamdani, in documenting how colonial forces sought to manipulate and alter traditions in supporting indirect structures of control.⁴⁷ This section follows this approach in exploring how the Kenyan Administration’s use of collective punishments was informed, coopted and bastardised into colonial means of discipline from the Kikuyu practice of ‘Blood Money’, but instead places emphasis of how the connection between administrators and leading loyalists facilitated this change, despite contradictions between the practice and European concepts of jurisprudence.

Wambugu was on the stand at an inquiry following the murder of preeminent loyalist and fellow Senior Chief Nderi, who was killed alongside his official escort only days before the declaration of emergency conditions after trying to break up a large-scale oathing ceremony close to his home in the Karangia sub-location. Despite over 500 people believed to be in attendance, no information was forthcoming about the precise details of the crime or those who were responsible. Frustrated at this silence, Oswald Edmund Branford Hughes, the District Commissioner Nyeri, approached the Provincial Commissioners Office for the approval of a collective punishment. The subsequent stock seizure was deemed fitting of the crime, with some 3,500 head of cattle and 6,000 sheep and goats being taken in an early morning raid across Thegenge location by the police and military.⁴⁸

This collective punishment was however an aberration of widespread Kikuyu conceptions of the limits of ‘blood money’, not only in scale but in the direction of who was made applicable for punishment. Colonial unitisation of native peoples did not correspond with Kikuyu designations, which circumscribed such punishments to that of the sub-clan or mbari to which the culprits belonged rather than delineated by geographical area. Anger and dissatisfaction over the perceived arbitrary nature of the punishment was vocally expressed at the inquiry. The new headman at Unjiru sub-location, Mundio Njire, was directing labour at Kiandu school as the late Chief was being murdered. Only in the role a matter of weeks following the murder of the previous headman, Mundio knew nothing of the crime or its perpetrators but protested firmly to the inquiry:

Headman Ndugunya was of my own ‘mbari’ (sub-clan). He was murdered. It is not fair for the stock of the people of his sub-clan to be taken away. The stock of the ‘mbaris’ of the two men accused of his murder should not be returned; they should pay the blood money out of it. There are 3 clans in my sub-location, but many sub-clans. I am ‘mumbui’; the two accused are ‘muchera’ and ‘murtherandu’; the third who ran away is ‘muchera’ (clans).⁴⁹

Mundio’s explanation of blood money, in contrast to that of Wambugu, reflects both the personal nature of the punishment and specificity with which it was intended to be used. Under Native customary law in East Africa, crimes were commonly viewed as private wrongdoings between individuals.⁵⁰ In most cases which went before Native Tribunal, monetary fines were the generalised form of restitution meted out between mbari. Even in cases of murder or personal harm, it was financial recompense, which was the preferred punishment, giving name to the practice of ‘blood money’. This was anathema to European penal traditions which viewed crimes as in breach of the peace and in violation of the laws enshrined within. In essence, misdemeanours were acts against the community at large. In this system, punishment was focused on the individual and personalised to be equitable to the seriousness of the crime committed. As the Kenyan Administration acted to coopt certain aspects of native practice, a third hybrid system of colonial justice was fashioned. Informed from a mix of European penal traditions, colonial psychology and aspects of native customary law, this amalgamation was a malleable concept, distinct and unrecognisable to European or African jurisprudence.⁵¹ Mundio’s understanding of the limits of ‘blood money’ was echoed by Elder Kariuki Ichura:

We never had trouble in Kihora, so why are we included? I was born and brought up there, and I have not seen any bad men. We used to burn bad men. The Government should punish the evil men who are arrested and their clans – the blood price in this District is 60 goats and 6 rams and 200/- worth of beer.⁵²

In both these testimonies the collective responsibility of the mbari was the feature around which ‘blood money’ as a concept operated. The sub-clan, or liminally, the clan, was held responsible, to and for, the actions of its individuals. Demarcation of this form did not correspond with the simplified geographic and ethnic unitisation employed by the Kenyan state. As has been detailed, a belief in the communal nature of East African society informed colonial policy of unitisation; however, such sweeping generalisations ignored the nuances of identities and groups within ethnicities which were vital differentiators in Kikuyu conceptualisations of collective responsibility. The sheer scale of forfeiture this incurred as a result was alien to Kikuyu understanding.

The contesting statements of ex-Senior chief Wambugu and the residents of Thegenge served to make ‘blood money’, at the inquiry at least, a disputed practice. The presence of the prominent loyalist leader at the Nyeri court was vital for the colonial state. After the murder of Nderi, a show of solidarity between the loyalist community and the Kenya Government was essential; but more than this, Wambugu’s testimony, due to his pre-eminence and experience, was taken as an endorsement of the appropriateness of the District Officials’ actions. The specificity with which the residents of Thegenge speak of the blood price ‘in this District’ and of the peculiarities of the sub-clans involved are superseded by Wambugu’s simplistic assertion that ‘we used to do this before the Europeans came.’⁵³ Making use of loyalist collaboration to justify coercive actions of control would be a vital component in legitimising the use of collective punishments throughout the emergency. The quid pro quo between loyalist access to the benefits of the state and legitimisation of more coercive tools of control formed the understanding through which ‘Constituencies of Control’ could flourish.

Grounding acts of oppression in local custom, even imagined ones, was a vital function of normalising these processes within the operations of the state. As would become common practice throughout the emergency, this interpretation and reinterpretation of native customary laws was a further tool of control. The uncodified nature of these rules meant that clarification was often a construction to fit the peculiarities of challenges posed to the state. Here too, loyalists played a crucial role as the repositories of these purported ‘genuine expressions’ of native control. Brett Shadle has argued that attempts toward codification were resisted repeatedly by officials, as a threat to limit their administrative power.⁵⁴ It was the ambiguity of such laws that provided administrators with the necessary licence to act with flexibility to the challenges they faced.

In short, the actions at Thegenge were indicative of a colonial state which valued control above all else. Justifications made in parallels to ‘blood money’ were disingenuous comparisons to a nuanced and specific practice, acknowledged through its private compensatory purpose, rather than as a medium of discipline. Established, therefore, in the narrative of colonial discourse by the beginning of the emergency period as, ‘thoroughly familiar to them’; reactive and chaotic, collective punishments armed District Officials with a blunt weapon of control to be wielded in first response to challenge.⁵⁵ Martin Chanock in his study on the formation of African customary law in Malawi and Zambia during the colonial era, has argued that African ‘tradition’ was something which was constantly reinterpreted and reimagined, with customary law being pushed by both administrator and African in different ways to fit their aims.⁵⁶ In Central Kenya during Mau Mau, the aims of leading loyalists and administrators aligned to pursue an interpretation of ‘Blood Money’ which would be effectively punitive against those which would challenge the established ‘Constituencies of Control’. With the introduction of new sweeping emergency regulations, these arbitrary powers were to become even more pronounced.

Emergency Regulations and the Protection of Loyalists

The introduction of emergency regulations in October 1952 did not significantly change the functional process of how collective punishments operated but did diminish the levels of oversight involved in the procedure. To make the punitive action relevant to the exigencies of the emergency, expediency in dealing with the increased volume of cases and the needs for swift and effective discipline had to be met. In practice, Provincial Commissioners throughout the Kikuyu lands of the Rift Valley and Central Province were under emergency regulations empowered with the authority to instruct their District Officials to carry out seizures of livestock, vehicles or other moveable property based on; suspicion of aiding or abetting terrorists, the failure to take reasonable steps in halting the commission of a crime, and/or, the suspicion of withholding evidence that may lead to the capture of the criminals responsible. One meaningful change enacted by the regulations was to remove the necessity for inquiries, like that following the seizure at Thegenge. This was part of a streamlining of the process which now instead functioned with a report from the Provincial or District Commissioner, informed by his District Team, containing his recommendations sent to the Governor for final approval.⁵⁷

Collective punishments in the early emergency period provided the District Official with the authority of action to act within his locality in support of challenges to loyalists, consequently this made for a system with a great degree of variation in exactly how, and in reaction to what, these regulations would be instituted. Emergency regulation 4A permitted for collective punishment by reason of either, a ‘crime’ that had been committed that the residents of an area had failed to prevent, or, in effect, that those inhabitants or a substantial number of them, were Mau Mau supporters. These reasons were intentionally nebulous, as then Solicitor General Eric Griffith-Jones conceded, in order so they could be ‘prayed in aid in any case in which the circumstances so admit.’⁵⁸ Necessary to this however was the commission of a ‘crime’, as specified under the Penal Code. In the first few months of the emergency, those crimes which would, and would not, spark a collective punishment fluctuated wildly subject to the characteristics of the official in charge and that of his loyalist allies. Indicative of this disparity were the seizures at Othaya and location 11 of Fort Hall which took place in the first months of 1953.

The former, a stock seizure at Kahajo itura in the Othaya Location of Nyeri, followed an attack on loyalists in the location which left one dead and another injured. Francis Wanjohi Kiragu, the leader of the Kairuthi resistance group, an early variant of the Kikuyu Home Guard, was killed after being set upon and wounded by two rifle bullets fired into his chest. Impaired from his injuries, Francis fell from his bicycle but managed to run some 200 yards before being overtaken and hacked to death by pangas. His friend, Nathan Kimotho Gathithi had his scalp furrowed by a bullet in the melee but managed to make his escape and avoid further injury.⁵⁹ Despite taking place half-a-mile east of Kairuthi on the busy Othaya – Kairuthi road and in the daylight of the early evening, no information was forthcoming when police arrived at the scene. In the midst of the event, attention was attracted to the area by the distressed shouts of local women, but as the investigations started these same voices fell silent.⁶⁰ The Othaya attack followed shortly on the heels of a spate of crimes in the division, ranging from attempted murder to loyalist disappearances, the most heinous of which was the brutal murder of a Headman and police Askari near Iriaini school a few weeks earlier.⁶¹ With police investigations proving fruitless time and time again, each of these instances in isolation could have justified a collective punishment as detailed under the emergency regulations.

Hesitant to proceed, J.L. Wordsworth, the Acting District Officer of Othaya division, sought the counsel of the pre-eminent local loyalist, Chief Paolo, and a number of the elders of the Local Tribunal before Francis’ death who impressed upon him the need for punishment. It was the fatal attack on the Home Guard leader that finally spurred him to action. The total seizure of 719 head of cattle and over 1300 sheep and goats from 191 families was a statement; recognised as ‘severe’ but apt to the crime, it had the desired effect.⁶² Eleven people were forthcoming with evidence in relation to the murder of Francis’ following the seizure which caused Hughes, the District Commissioner in Nyeri, to have the forfeiture schedule rewritten with these families retaining their livestock.⁶³

In effect, the case at Othaya is a textbook example of what collective punishment was intended to achieve. In both punishing those who refused to give information while simultaneously breaking the Mau Mau silence, the colonial state induced the desired effect. However, given the number of incidents against pro-government allies needed to convince the need for punishment, conceptualising the case as in protection of the loyalist is problematic. Wordsworth’s initial resistance to request the use of such sweeping punishments was emblematic of a section of officials who were conservative towards the use of these new powers. Be it reservations about the nature of the punishment, the implication of a failure to retain control or simply inexperience, some treated the use of such action as a last resort.

The case at location 11, by contrast, saw a comparable seizure without such reservations. Based on limited evidence and a meagrely detailed report, a third of the livestock of six matura were taken following the murder of two police officers, Constable M’Imberia of the Kenya Police and Gitau Kabuthi of the Tribal police.⁶⁴ With no one coming forward to report news of the attack to authorities only five miles away in Fort Hall, the residents of the area were deemed complicit to its commission. The sole evidence of presumed guilt was the movement of livestock in small numbers in the days leading up to the murders. Herds had been transported away from the matura to the shared grazing land at Tumutumu, near Tana power station, with the last cattle leaving the morning of the policemen’s death. On this basis, a seizure of over 500 cattle and 700 sheep and goats was carried out on 103 residents by the District Commissioner Fort Hall.⁶⁵ On reaching the desk of Governor Evelyn Baring, he acknowledged this as a ‘particularly bad case’ and deemed approval necessary in this instance as ‘good work has clearly been done by the police.’⁶⁶ Showing support for the wounded authorities was paramount in considerations.

These two cases in isolation are a microcosm of the regional and personal variance with which emergency regulations were enacted. While the willingness with which the local District Official was ready to turn to more coercive measure in the maintenance of control differed in both cases, this was emblematic of a system which relied on the judgement of ‘man on the spot’ first and foremost to make the best decisions on just how to manage ‘his’ locality. Despite a clear disparity in the factors leading to the seizures, the precipitating incident in both cases included the murder of active loyalists involved in the counter-insurgency campaign against Mau Mau forces. Protection of the loyalist was, at a basic level, essential to maintenance of legitimacy in the emergency, but was foundational to local ‘Constituencies of Control’. In his work on loyalism, Dan Branch has suggested that the relationship between the Provincial Administration and Home Guard in the period was predicated on their tacit approval of abuses and hostility.⁶⁷ Violence alone was however not enough to maintain this connection when the Home Guard were the ones placed in far more imminent danger. It was the normalisation of collective punishments, criminalising silence in equating a lack of forthcoming information with complicity, which acted to sustain officer-loyalist connections in both its symbolic reaction to challenge and by giving Mau Mau support a real and visible cost. The colonial capacity for coercion was relational to the protection of the loyalist as the acclaimed ‘legitimate expression of native interest’, however loyalist consent to this was predicated on the benefits this provided, not least of all their safety. Coercion and loyalist support were therefore necessarily synergistic, the weakening of one of these factors had a detrimental effect on the other.

By 1953, familiarity had developed with the new powers at the disposal of the District Officials. Across the Central Province and Rift Valley, and accelerated by events, the period would be transformative on collective punishments from its piecemeal origins to use on an industrial scale. Supporting this change were amendments, both clerically and practically, which would help alter collective punishments from an exceptional to everyday means of control.⁶⁸ Functionally, as knowledge of the limits and usage of these powers increased, so did the expediency with which they were implemented but with the increasing number of cases, the necessity to streamline the administrative burden meant the creation of a pro forma to increase clerical efficiency in reducing time spent chasing up additional information.

The use of this new form was initiated in the Muruguru sub-location of Aguthi in a strong case involving both the capture and death of one Kikuyu guard, as well as a subsequent attack on a Home Guard outpost which resulted in another man dead and numerous others wounded.⁶⁹ Despite presenting particularly robust conditions for seizure, the case received a swift and unedited passage unusual up to that point for one not involving settler interests. By formalising these arrangements, the speed and ease with which cases of collective punishment could be constructed and reviewed increased. This was an important bureaucratic change in the establishment of collective punishment as a dependable means of quotidian control. In making them simplified and straightforward to implement, this functioned to make them prosaic and commonplace. Part of normalising the use of coercion in everyday control was making it less work.

The events of mid-1953 were however to overtake circumstance in refocusing the attention of the Kenyan Administration. A brutal attack on the inhabitants of the Northern Kiambu village of Lari was to become a decisive moment in the conflict and the single biggest example of Mau Mau violence during the emergency. The sheer scale of bloodshed seen in the attack took the colonial state aback, with the organisation of insurgent forces taking them thoroughly by surprise. As Anderson notes, any complacency or lingering hope that Mau Mau was an opposition who might be easily defeated was thoroughly extinguished by the events of 26th March.⁷⁰ Lari was an instance of such exemplary violence that it would have a seismic effect on realigning loyalism in Kenya. The cacophony of fear, anger and confusion was to cause a vacuum for increased coercion to fill. ⁷¹

Lari presented itself as a critical juncture. With loyalist forces putting their lives on the line with devastating results, the Administration needed to be shown to be doing more to safeguard them.⁷² The solution was to make protection of the loyalist a principal justification for collective punishment. Thus, character judgements on the ill repute of areas with assurances that measures would not detriment those deemed loyal became the few limiting factors on the punishments’ use. While the commission of a ‘crime’ was still necessitated, a failure to bring forward useful information became tantamount to complicity unless one’s loyalty was proved. In cases in Kihome and Kianjogu, expedient action was taken against, so called, ‘bad areas’ because of crimes against Home Guard units, despite no evidence for local complicity. The failure to bring forth useful information was deemed emblematic of non-cooperation. ⁷³

It was the case therefore that after mid-1953, the colonial state was no longer just reliant on the loyalist community for support, but dependent on these men in their continuing counter-insurgency efforts. Branch argues that because of the ‘devolution of the tools of coercion’ during civil war, counter-insurgencies become reliant on irregular armies due to their propensity for violence.⁷⁴ In Kenya, he argues, the Provincial Administration encouraged the highly active and forceful role taken by the Home Guard to control the direction of the war and satiate settler demands for revenge for Mau Mau atrocities, in an attempt to stem a loss of influence to the central government.⁷⁵

Violence only tells half the story, however. Provincial Administrators were not quick to abandon their tools of coercion. Loosening regulations saw collective punishments applied more liberally than ever before. Despite a changing picture of violence, the Provincial Administration leaned into quotidian coercion to validate their position within local control structures. The ever more arbitrary nature of collective punishments was not without reason therefore, reliance on the increasingly forceful Home Guard induced the Provincial Administration to react with coercion principally to preserve their position as arbiter of control and fulfil their obligation to their ‘Constituencies’. In the rapidly more coercive localities of Central Kenya, the benefit of loyalism, at least in part, would be ‘protection’ from the Administration’s own capricious and summary punishments.

The increasing trend of coercion through the latter half of 1953 was paralleled with a continued narrowing of the limits of loyalism, with association or commitment to the local Home Guard becoming an essential signifier of loyalty. Consistent with this, locales of collective punishment were being characterised as ‘probably the worst in the division’ and ‘indoctrinated’ with Mau Mau, as the ‘othering’ of those not explicitly loyal was accentuated to justify more and more heavier punishments, deemed necessary to be effective.⁷⁶

Re-imaging Collective Punishments

By the beginning of 1954, collective punishment had become a part of everyday life in Central Kenya. The readiness with which these punitive measures were meted out left wealth and livelihood of those deemed disloyal throughout Kikuyuland at the mercy of capricious Provincial Administrators, who were often all too ready to make use of their extensive powers. As the exigencies of the emergency tested the limits of loyalism and control, the Kenyan Administration had defaulted to using the ‘stick’ to ensure fidelity, from mid-1954, as the official mind turned to the ‘carrot’, collective punishment would once again see a shift in its application and focus.

The effectiveness of the forfeiture of livestock, underpinning collective punishment throughout the early emergency period was the importance of cattle and other animals to provincial life in the reaches of Central Province. Beyond the obvious value of animals as a source of food, a large herd of livestock was a demonstration of wealth and therefore import within Kikuyu society. Not lost on the colonial state was also the importance of animals as part of a traditional wedding dowry.⁷⁷ Loss of livestock did not just mean potential economic hardship therefore but could restrict social advancement. It was the threat of these factors that made collective punishments the preferred form of punitive discipline used by District Officials in the everyday.

Yet, the changing context of the conflict put this effectiveness in question forcing alternative means of punishment to be considered. The forced relocation of thousands of Kikuyu from major urban areas, as well as from settler farms throughout the Rift Valley and beyond had a significant impact on the composition of people living in the reserves of Central Province. Long before the events of Operation Anvil, which removed large numbers of Kikuyu from Nairobi, repatriation had meant an influx of some 150,000 Kikuyu into the reserves with little to no employment or land on which to grow food or graze livestock.⁷⁸ More than just an administrative and ecological nightmare waiting to happen, this posed a significant challenge to the District Officers preferred means of control. If those Kikuyu who may be the focus of punitive action have no livestock, then how are collective punishments meant to be effective? The government’s solution was to widen the tools of coercion available once again to the Provincial Administration with the introduction of collective fines.⁷⁹

On the 7th March 1954, the emergency regulation governing the use of collective punishments was altered to allow for the application of monetary sanctions on locations deemed active in the furtherance of Mau Mau. Functionally, the requirements by which collective punishments operated did not change, nor did the established process by which they were applied. The new powers bestowed upon District Officers were made use of almost instantly. Following a murder in the Kangema District of Fort Hall on 6th March, just two days later a collective fine of 20 shillings was ordered to be applied against every male in the District, thought to be up to 10,000 people.⁸⁰ To all intents and purposes the Kangema case looked a very simple example of a collective punishment, however the reality of the application was far less so.

Operating as a form of test case for the amended emergency regulation 4A, the Secretariat took a guiding role in shaping the reasoning, timing, and execution of the Kangema collective punishment. Contrary to normal practice, Attorney General John Whyatt took the liberty to draft the order form for local District Officer R.G. Wilson. He was keen that the government were not to be seen to be applying retrospective penalties on crimes with the use of new powers.⁸¹ As such, Whyatt dated the order the 8th March while specifically citing the reason for punishment as Kangema being active in the furtherance of Mau Mau as just cause for punishment, rather than the murder which had occurred just a day before. He was forthcoming with his reasoning, in shifting the focus of the punishment to the encompassing and nebulous crime of acting to further Mau Mau, the Administration was given the plausible deniability they required against any claims of retroactive action. ⁸² Despite the publicity given to this, privately in a memo to Baring, the Deputy Governor Frederick Crawford cited the previous murder by a gang of some 70 Mau Mau adherents as grounds for the such strong action.⁸³ The crime was deemed one which could not go unpunished, but tact was required to ensure the carefully constructed timeline of the fine was strictly adhered to.

It was Crawford himself, in league with the Chief Native Commissioner, that fashioned the agreed process by which this would be achieved. Ensuring each step was conducted as directed, the Deputy Governor instructed the CNC to confirm the District Team submit a report specifically stating that gangs had been harboured within the location and/or that the inhabitants of the area had failed to report the presence of such gangs. This was necessary to correspond with the order which had previously been produced by Whyatt. More than this, Crawford instructed that compulsory villagisation in the area was to be hastened throughout the District except for those few loyal areas and up to 500 Mau Mau suspects, a seemingly arbitrary number, be picked up for detention by the District Commissioner on either Governor’s detention orders or initially on the new Community Detention procedure.⁸⁴

The lead taken by the Central Administration in Kangema and the expedient and strong measures that followed were a misnomer in the common application of collective punishments during the emergency but speak to the ever more arbitrary process of discipline in action throughout Central Province. The little oversight of collective punishment that existed previously functioned by the Secretariat analysing the reports produced by District Officials to ensure sanctions were being applied correctly. Kangema turned this on its head with the Central Administration instructing on what the report was to contain.

By early 1954, with the security situation steadily improving and those deemed loyal more readily identifiable, the purpose of collective punishments was no longer about dissuading criminal action or encouraging communal condemnation. Although these were still marginal aims. Collective punishments were primarily about punishing those who were perceived as challenging the authority of the state. Kangema was not to mark the beginning of the Central Administration taking a greater role in quotidian punishments, it was once again the Provincial Administration who were to take the lead in those collective fines which were to follow. Regardless of intent however, the Central Administration’s cameo role had provided a lesson for the Provincial Administration on just how their new powers could and should be employed. With the tool of collective fines at their disposal, the presence of challenge was to be met with swift and indiscriminate justice.

The importance of villagisation to the introduction of collective fines should not be overlooked. In the case in Kangema, Crawford makes specific mention of the need to increase the speed of villagisation in the area for the total of the punishment to have the maximum punitive effect. As noted, the use of collective fines in this context had the value of impacting all male residents of the location equally, regardless of the livestock owned. This change was imperative in part given the increasing numbers of Kikuyu being sent back to the reserves from all over Kenya, but more pertinent to this modification was the effect the process of villagisation itself was having on restricting the ownership of livestock throughout Kikuyuland. As Branch notes, because of limited space in new villages during relocation ‘all livestock was confiscated’.⁸⁵ Through such measures, it became necessary to reposition collective punishments to a form which could still be applicable to the changing context of the conflict. If the dual process of villagisation and the Swynnerton plan was aimed at creating a class of waged Kikuyu peasantry, then the solution was to direct punishments against disloyal pockets.

The Provincial Administration did not require great encouragement to make use of their new coercive powers, or to test the limits of what these powers allowed. Although the Home Guard had destabilised their monopoly on coercion within local ‘Constituencies of Control’, restricting access to the ‘rewards’ of cooperation alone did little to help the Provincial Administration meet instances of direct challenge. Punishment was still a vital function of control and an essential part of demonstrating the state’s power. In Kibingo and Minyua matura of location 6 in Kigumo, a collective fine was imposed in April 1954, after an enquiry into the murder of twelve loyalists yielded no useful information.⁸⁶ Investigations into the events of the evening of 19th March returned evidence of a gang being hosted in the location, after signs of a feast for a large number of men were found at the scene. At dawn of the following morning, the Kikuyu Guard under Headman Wainaina arrived to investigate a burning hut which had been spotted by them in the early hours to find the mutilated and dismembered bodies of twelve loyalist men and women strewn throughout the area. Apart from for a handful of people, the remaining adult inhabitants of the two matura were nowhere to be found when the Kikuyu Guard arrived, having hastily left the location with all their belongings in tow in the night.⁸⁷ Given the estimated time taken to prepare and devour the feast thought consumed by the gang, it was deemed there to be ample time for anyone who wished to have taken information to the Home Guard post to do so. In addition to this, the decision to spend the night removing themselves and their belongings from the scene, rather than help in bringing forth information, was believed to be just another sign of complicity.

Such an act of defiance required punishment, but the penalty meted out by the District Officer at Kigumo, D. Clay, surpassed even that charged by the Central Administration at Kangema. Due to exploits deemed active in the furtherance of the objectives of Mau Mau, all adult residents in the two matura, both men and women of or over the apparent age of 18 years, were fined 20 shillings each.⁸⁸ This marked a meaningful change in the application of collective punishments. Forfeiture of stock, the basis of early examples of the practice, had been predicated on the idea that in directing punishment against adult male Kikuyu, the entire family structure would be impacted. Collective punishments had not previously been focused against the actions of women. In the Kigumo case, the emphasis placed in the District Officer’s report on the hosting and feeding of the Mau Mau gang, traditionally conceived as a female activity, in part explains this change. The introduction of fines allowed for more directed punishments, so women could more specifically be targeted for demonstrations of dissonance.

Here too, the process of villagisation showed similar development. Elkins notes that ‘villagization was intended as a punitive strategy to contain, control, and discipline Mau Mau women.’⁸⁹ Although women had been central to insurgency efforts within the passive wing of Mau Mau in the supply of food, support and information, the tools of quotidian coercion that had been at the disposal of the Provincial Administration restricted what could be achieved in directly punishing them for their role. As the security situation in Central Kenya improved and loyalists felt more emboldened to publicise their allegiance, the Provincial Administration took a more active stance in punishing and disciplining disloyal women. In the Konyu location and Mathira Division of Nyeri, similar cases involving the supply of food and shelter to Mau Mau gangs likewise resulted in collective fines against both the male and female inhabitants of the locations.⁹⁰ Rather than relax their efforts, as Mau Mau influence first appeared on the wane the Provincial Administration upped the coercive control to solidify their advantage. The establishment of monetary fines had not just introduced a new wrinkle into collective punishments but changed the direction and focus of how these could be applied. The cost of disloyalty in Central Kenya was given a fixed price.

As evidenced in the cases of Mathira and Kigumo, the development of collective fines in Central Kenya were less informed by a directed Nairobi policy than from those in the Provinces testing the limits of what their extensive emergency powers would allow. Due to the disaggregated nature of the state, the Central Administration took on the responsibility to supply the field officer with the tools of coercion deemed necessary to maintain control in his location, but it was left to man on the ground to have the personal discretion of how best to use them. In the case of collective punishments, this resulted in a chaotic, uneven, and often haphazardly applied penalty which was used capriciously and with great regional variance to support the differing needs of Central Kenya’s localised ‘Constituencies of Control’.

Conclusions

This article has offered a new reading of control in the Mau Mau rebellion with collective punishments as its focus but does not pretend to mask the role interpersonal violence played in the conflict. It does not address the importance of detention camps to the counter-insurgency campaign, nor the use of extra-judicial violence in dealing with those deemed active participants in the Mau Mau cause. Instead, it has focused upon the way in which the Kikuyu public at large were managed and controlled, exploring how collective punishment was moulded and changed from the traditional practice of ‘Blood Money’ to fit the needs of colonial administration and the emergency. It has shown from early benchmark cases such as, Thegenge, that the ‘Constituencies of Control’ between loyalists and provincial administrators were able to establish collective punishment as both an apt and recognised penalty to the Kikuyu themselves. Thus, with the introduction of emergency regulations in October 1952 reducing both barriers to punishment and oversight in its application, the flexible and versatile collective punishment was able to ascend to a tool of everyday domination. Never static in its development, the widening of powers to allow for monetary fines in March 1954, supported broader repertoires of colonial domination as part of the villagisation programme and, as seen in Kigumo, allowed for the extension of more directed quotidian punishment to women for the first time. It was in this adaptation to the changing complexion of the counter-insurgency that collective punishment was able to sustain as the preferred tool of quotidian control in Central Kenya.

A history of empire that makes coercion its focus must engage with the more quotidian means of control, as while violence engenders fear, it is these processes which create the structures of domination through which colonial authorities operate and thrive. Debates on Imperialism which fail to engage with these concepts far too often side-line more mundane aspects of control for a concentration on violence that does scant justice to the complex relationship between empire and coercion. As this article has demonstrated, in the Mau Mau example, the real and present danger of the counter-insurgency campaign for the majority was economic hardship, rather than interpersonal violence. Collective punishment was capriciously utilised to give ‘silence’ a price and force the Kikuyu en masse to make their allegiances clear or be left to suffer the consequences.

Thus, this article reminds us that as accounts of violence and brutality are all too often explained away or relativised in the heady atmosphere of Britain’s current imperial history wars, the need for more sober and nuanced interventions which show the fundamental and quotidian nature of colonial coercion become all the more necessary. In turning attentions back to the archive and taking the breadth of colonial control beyond violence as a focus, the case for the sinister nature of colonialism in some ways becomes even more clear. While there can be little doubt that these arguments will continue to rage on, it is perhaps now time for historians of empire to turn their attention to the everyday rather than the exceptional as they persist to uncover the depths of coercion and injustice at play in Britain’s late colonial history.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Report of Collective Punishment Ordered Under Regulations 4A 4B of the Emergency Regulations 1952. 1st November 1953. FCO 141/5997 (1/1), TNA.

2 Ibid.

3 MacArthur, Dedan Kimathi on Trial; Baughan, “Rehabilitating an Empire,” 57–79.

4 See Anderson, “Mau Mau in the High Court,” 699–716; See also, Elkins, “Alchemy of Evidence,” 731–48; and Bennett, “Soldiers in the Court Room,” 717–30.

5 Cobain, The History Thieves, 109.

6 Anderson, “Mau Mau in the High Court,” 699–716.

7 The files occupied almost 200 feet of shelf space at Hanslope Park. See Cobain, The History Thieves, 109.

8 Between 1963 and 1994, as countries were moving towards independence, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) relocated almost 20,000 documents from over 30 overseas territories back to the UK. Owing to the sensitive, oft troubling and, above all else, embarrassing nature of the so-called ‘Migrated Archive’, for over four decades the very existence of the colonial records remained a closely guarded secret. The best account of the history of the migrated archive is the investigation and report by Sir Anthony Cary for the FCO: “The Migrated Archives”.

9 Anderson, “Mau Mau in the High Court,” 714; and Drayton, The Guardian, October 27, 2013.

10 Badger, “Historians, a Legacy of Suspicion,” 799–807.

11 See, Banton, “Destroy? Mitigate? Conceal?” 321–335; See also, Banton, “Lost and Found,” 33–46; and Sato, “Operation Legacy,” 697–719.

12 Britain’s Gulag was titled Imperial Reckoning in America. For critique, See Ogot, “Britain's Gulag by Elkins,” 493–505.

13 See, Anderson, “Guilty Secrets,” 142–160; and Duffy, “Legacies of British Colonial Violence,” 489–542.

14 See, Anderson and Weis, “The Prosecution of Rape in Wartime,” 267–294.

15 For a summation of these debates, See Kennedy, The Imperial History Wars, 131–147.

16 For examples which make use of the migrated archive. See, Branch, “Political Traffic,” 811–831; and Burton, “Decolonization, the Cold War, and Africans,” 169–191.

17 See, for accounts of Mau Mau violence, Elkins, Britain’s Gulag; Anderson, Histories of the Hanged.

18 See, Branch, Defeating Mau Mau, 107–110; Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 293–297.

19 Berman, Control and Crisis, 205. For insight into the loyalist-administrator dynamic, see also, Branch, Defeating Mau Mau.

20 See, for reference to collective punishments during Mau Mau, Elkins, Britain’s Gulag, 55, 70; Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 254, 293; and Bennett, Fighting the Mau Mau, 220–222.

21 Anderson, “Mau Mau in the High Court,” 709.

22 Sato, “Operation Legacy,” 712.

23 See, for the notion of colonial ethno-psychology and the construction of ‘the African’, Vaughan, Curing Their Ills.

24 Reference to the practice appear in British anthropological journals as early as 1911. See, Hobley, “Kikuyu and Kamba Religious Beliefs,” 426.

25 See, especially, Anderson, “Making the Loyalists Bargain,” 48–70; see also, Branch, Defeating Mau Mau, 103–116.

26 See, for crystallisation of identity, Branch, Defeating Mau Mau, 97–103.

27 Early Mau Mau success in the emergency was predicated on a monopoly on information. Through a combination of tacit support, intimidation and oathing, the insurgents were able to compel the Kikuyu public en masse to supply themselves with reliable information while being silent to police and other colonial figures demands for the same. For more information, See Branch, Defeating Mau Mau, 52–54.

28 See, especially, Branch, “The Enemy Within,” 302. See also, Branch, Defeating Mau Mau, 103; Anderson, “Making the Loyalists Bargain,” 48–70.

29 ‘Non-combative counter-insurgency’ is the term used here to cover the processes of villagisation, land consolidation and wider development employed from mid-1954. See Branch, Defeating Mau Mau, 120–147.

30 This period saw the mass removal of Kikuyu from Nairobi through Operation Anvil, the beginnings of the villagisation programme and mounting losses for Mau Mau militants. For details, See, Branch, “The Enemy Within,” 291–315.

31 Whittaker, “Legacies of Empire,” 645.

32 Anderson, “Stock Theft,” 405.

33 Governor EAP, to Harcourt, 14 December 1912; closure re: Stock and Produce Theft Ordinance, Comber (Attorney-General EAP) to Governor EAP, 6 December 1912. CO 533/397/11, TNA.; See also, Anderson, “Stock Theft,” 405.

34 Lonsdale has argued that colonial rule rested on these ‘mental constructions of social separations’. See Lonsdale, “Mau Maus of the Mind,” 401.

35 Kennedy, “Constructing the Colonial Myth,” 242.

36 For debate around the concept of ‘invention of tradition’, See Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition,” 211–62; Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition Revisited,” 62–111; and Spear, “Neo-Traditionalism,” 3–27.

37 Vaughan. Curing their Ills, 21.

38 See, for example, Branch, “Imprisonment and Colonialism,” 264.

39 See, for more information on District Administration in Kenya and regional difference, Cashmore, “T.H.R. Studies in District Administration”; See also, Berman, “Bureaucracy & Incumbent Violence,” 232.

40 See Berman, Control & Crisis, 245, 300–301.

41 In inquiry hearings collective punishments were referred to as deterrents aimed at inducing ‘collective responsibility’. See, for example, D.J Penwill, First Class Magistrate. Hearing in the 1st Class Court at Nyeri. 12th November 1952. Findings. FCO 141/5932 (2/1)

42 Anderson, “Stock Theft,” 405.

43 Killingray, “Law and Order in British Colonial Africa,” 411–438; and Anderson, “Stock Theft,” 406.

44 Ex- Senior Chief Wambugu s/o Mathangani. Inquiry: Seizure of cattle in Thegenge location on 10th November, 1952; Under section 7 and 8, Cap.45, Laws of Kenya. pg. 14. FCO 141/5932 (2/1), TNA.

45 Ibid.

46 References to ‘Blood Money’, particularly in reference to collective punishments, are underdeveloped in the historiography, for the best account. See, Ibhawoh, “Medicine Murders”; For reference to its uses see, Muriuki, The History of the Kikuyu, 72–81.

47 See Mamdani, Citizen and Subject; and Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition”.

48 O.E.B Hughes, District Commissioner Nyeri. Inquiry: Seizure of cattle in Thegenge location. Pg. 6. FCO 141/5932 (2/1), TNA.

49 Mundio s/o Njire – 9th Witness. Inquiry: Seizure of cattle in Thegenge location. Pg. 13. FCO 141/5932 (2/1), TNA.

50 See, Ibhawoh, “Medicine Murders,” 114.

51 The Bushe Commission report of 1933 had condemned administrative justice and instructed all be done to encourage an end to Native law, however fear of resulting detribalisation amongst officials saw the birth of a hybrid system. See, Shadle, “Changing Traditions,” 418; Ibhawoh, “Medicine Murders,” 114.

52 Elder Kariuki s/o Ichura. Inquiry: Seizure of cattle in Thegenge location. Pg. 17. FCO 141/5932 (2/1), TNA.

53 Ex- Senior Chief Wambugu s/o Mathangani. Inquiry: Seizure of cattle in Thegenge location. Pg. 14. FCO 141/5932 (2/1), TNA.

54 See, Shadle, “Changing Traditions,” 414–416.

55 Findings. D.J Penwill. Inquiry: Seizure of cattle in Thegenge location. Pg. 22. FCO 141/5932 (2/1), TNA.

56 See Chanock, “Law, Custom and Social Order”.

57 This was made necessary through regulation 4A, section 2, of the Emergency (Amendment)(No.3) Regulations 1952. See, The Kenya Gazette, [Vol LIV – No 66] Supplement No. 61. Notice No 1253 (25 Nov 1952), 591.

58 Solicitor General (E. Griffith-Jones) to Governor (E. Baring). 30th January 1953. FCO 141/5941 (6), TNA.

59 Report on Outrages Committed in Othaya Location since the Declaration of the State of Emergency. Act. DO Othaya Division (JL Wordsworth) to DC Nyeri (OEB Hughes). 17th February 1953. FCO 141/5955 (1/3), TNA.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid.

62 Note. Ag. CNC (Windley) to Governor (E. Baring) 24th February 1953. FCO 141/5955 (3), TNA.

63 Cattle Seizure – Othaya Location. DC Nyeri (OEB Hughes) to PC CP (PW Low). FCO 141/5955 (7), TNA.

64 Report on seizure of cattle in accordance with section 4A(2) of the Emergency (Amendment)(No. 3) Regulations 1952, (G. Notice No. 1253/52). DC Fort Hall to PC CP. 14th January 1953. FCO 141/5946 (1), TNA.

65 Chief Native Commissioner (E.R. Davies) to Governor (E. Baring). 16th January 1953. FCO 141/5946 (3), TNA.

66 Governor (E. Baring) to Chief Native Commissioner (E.R. Davies). 22nd January 1953. FCO 141/5946 (4), TNA.

67 Branch, Defeating Mau Mau, 81.

68 In Central Province, a standardised report structure for the detailing of collective punishments was in use by April, which provided all the necessary information needed to satisfy a case for punitive action. In addition to clear itemising of functional information, such as dates, locations, and quantities of seizure; the new report structure required precise information relating to the reasoning for punishment, the circumstances of the case and the recommendations for forfeiture from both the District and Provincial Commissioner.

69 Report of Stock Seized under Regulation 4A of Emergency Regulations 1952. For PC CP (P.W. Low) to Ag. CNC. (E. Windley) 5th May 1953. FCO 141/5973 (1/1), TNA.

70 Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 132.

71 Initial reports were rough on details, but it was thought well over 100 people had been killed and over 50 huts burned to the ground, in an attack which was viewed as “almost open rebellion”. Note. Secretary of African Affairs to Chief Native Commissioner. 27th March 1953. FCO 141/5659 (94), TNA. For details on the Lari Massacre, see Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 119.

72 The following night in Kijabe, a lorry transporting prisoners was mistaken for a similar terrorist incident causing the European guards to open fire killing one Home Guard and two prisoners being transported from the African Inland Mission Home Guard station. On inquiry the case was dismissed as an “unfortunate affair” made understandable by the circumstance. – See Kijabe Police Station incident. Superintendent of Police, lower-Rift Valley District to Senior Superintendent of Police Rift Valley. 31st March 1953. FCO 141/5659 (135/1), TNA.; Kijabe incident. DC Naivasha to Chief Secretary. 14th October 1953. FCO 141/5659 (183), TNA.

73 Report of Collective Punishment Ordered under Regulation 4A and 4B of the Emergency Regulations, 1952. DC Nyeri (GN Hampson) to PC CP. 22nd May 1953. FCO 141/5980 (1/2), TNA; Report of Collective Punishment Ordered Under Regulations 4A and 4B of the Emergency Regulations 1952. DO Mahiga Location (J.C. Nottingham) to PC CP (PW. Low). 3rd July 1953. FCO 141/5981 (1/1), TNA.

74 Branch, Defeating Mau Mau, 79.

75 Ibid., 81.

76 Seizure of Stock, 10th July 1953. District Officer Kandara (WH Thompson) to PC CP (PW Low). 10th July 1953. FCO 141/5984 (1/1), TNA; Stock Seizure: Mungaria Sub Location, Nyeri. PC CP (PW. Low) to CNC. (E. Windley) 19th August 1953. FCO 141/5990 (1), TNA.

77 See Kinuthia, Wathika, and Mutiti, “Gendered Identities”.

78 Elkins, Britain’s Gulag, 125. For information on Operation Anvil, See Anderson, Histories of the Hanged, 200.

79 The compound factors of little employment and lack of land for crops and grazing for those relocated could make the payment of fines an issue. If an individual was unable to pay a fine, the cost of this was most often passed to his family or mbari; this could be accompanied with increased forced labour obligations providing the state with a source of cheap labour.

80 Order Imposing Fine, DC Kangema (Wilson) to CNC (Cowley), 10th March 1954. FCO 141/6031 (8), TNA.

81 Attorney General (Whyatt) to Deputy Governor (Crawford), 7th March 1954. FCO 141/6031 (1), TNA.

82 Ibid.

83 DG (Crawford) to Governor (Baring). 7th March 1954. FCO 141/6031 (2). TNA.

84 Communal Punishment: Kangema Division, DG to CNC, 8th March 1954. FCO 141/6031 (6), TNA.

85 Branch, “Defeating Mau Mau,” 109.

86 Copy of Report on 12 murders in Loc 6. DO Kigumo to DO Fort, April 7th 1954. FCO 141/6034 (1/1), TNA.

87 Ibid.

88 Order imposing fine. DO Kigumo (Clay). April 7th 1954. FCO 141/6034 (1/2), TNA.

89 Elkins, Britain’s Gulag, 240.

90 See Communal Punishment. Reference your Conf.E.42/119 of 20th December, 1954. DC Nyeri to PC CP. 25th January 1955. FCO 141/6039 (1/1), TNA; Communal Fines. DC Nyeri to PC CP. 10th February 1955. FCO 141/66041 (1/1). TNA.