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Histories Of The Hanged |
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Anderson, an Oxford lexturer, chronicles the British Empire's final decade in Kenya, during which time it battled the Mau Mau rebels in a bloody conflict that saw the imperialists resorting to the use of rigged military tribunals and concentration camps which resulted in the loss of thousands of lives.
W. W. Norton & Company, 406 pages
01/30/2005
$25.95
ISBN: 0393059863
Nonfiction
History
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
The average user rating for this book is 9.8 (out of 10) based on 6 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Johan S gave it a10:
A shattering eye-opener of a book. And what goes on in Iraq these days shows how little we have learned. If you have to violate basic human rights to implement your version of civilization in a culture, then civilization is not the propriate word.
Emmie S gave it a10:
I taught high school in Kikuyuland in 1962, the year after most detainees were released. These memories were painfully raw, the only villages were the emergency villages she describes. My students had all passed in front of the man with the bag over his head, whose nod meant you were sent into detention or executed. I have read this book and am glad to see that someone who will be listened to has finally documented a genocide which has been allowed to be buried under the carpet because we could not believe believe our respectable English allies could cover up such unspeakable crimes, and then burn the documentary evidence. Why did Harvard not publish this book? When confronted with a tide of letters smuggled out of the camps documenting the executions, torture, death from malnutrition and disease, not only of men, but of women and children, etc. the primary reaction of the Colonial Secretary was to demand that the letters be stopped, not to deal with the human rights violations on a mass scale. My only quarrel with the author is that I think her judgment of Kenyatta a bit harsh in the end... he had opposed the use of violence and was rejected by those who espoused the use of guerrilla war; had he included those same elements in his first government, we do not know what other path history might have taken. It was his to make the choices, and many worse things could have happened in Kenya in the next 20 years than did happen -- civil war, foreign instigated coup d'etat, etc. The criticism reminds me a bit of those who criticize Mandela for not being left-wing enough...
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