Unhappy Valley is a slick but misleading title for a book which purports to be "a considerable
revision in the understanding of the history of colonial Kenya and, more
widely, colonialism in Africa". The two volumes start, as many a fairy story does, with
the words "Once upon a time" and pursue their course with a blind disregard for the
intentions - however, but not always, mistaken - of bureaucrats in Europe, European
administrators in Africa and even those settlers, for example Karen Blixen, who could
see beyond the "Happy Valley" and did not follow the dictates of the Muthaiga Club as
it used to be. It contributes no conclusions to the study of colonialism in Africa, but does
provide a thoughtful and thought-provoking view of its nature and particularly of Mau
Mau.
However, the Marxist analysis of Mau Mau is as foreign to Kikuyu thought in general
as these two volumes are irrelevant to an assessment of modern states in Africa, which
owe more to arbitrary decisions made at the Congress of Berlin in 1884/5 and the development
of nation states based on their geographical limitations.
Although they may have satisfied the demands of the authors' students, these two
books should not be regarded either as a comprehensive interpretation of Kenyan history
for international scholars or as an interpretation of Kenyan history in African terms -
albeit they do illustrate the limitations of a narrowly structuralist Marxist theory of the
creation of one East African state. The realities of politics are overlooked. The concept
of Kenyan nationality - which Kenyatta emphasised against Kimathi and Mau Mau - is
not considered. (Moreover, as long ago as 1945 Kenyatta had been associated with Du
Bois in England, thinking and planning in far wider terms than the geographical boundaries
of Kenya.) The role of Kenyans who are not Kikuyu is overlooked in these books
and the role of Kenyans who are not black (like Asian merchants), but who are citizens,
is ignored.
However, there must be praise for John Lonsdale's Section Eleven when he admits to
uncertainty as to the motivation of Kenyan Africans and as to the strength of their concept
of nationhood. Even the concept of the tribe, as a unit, is shown to be a European
one - an imposed central paramountcy rather than an autochthonous growth. But you
cannot generalise about colonialism in Africa by 'interpreting' the example of one modern
African state 30 years into an independence which followed only twice as long a
period of dependence.
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