Fighting the Mau Mau
The British Army and Counter-Insurgency in the Kenya Emergency

This new study of Britain's counterinsurgency campaign in Kenya examines the difference between official and accepted methods of conquering insurgents.

Huw Bennett (Author)

9781107656246, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 22 November 2012

320 pages, 1 b/w illus. 3 maps
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.51 kg

'Offers a careful dissection of the dynamic of the use of force during the insurgency, disassembling the issues surrounding minimum force and the army's behaviour towards civilians the better to put them back together. Locating the study within the 'military phase' of the Kenya Emergency (which lasted from 1952 until the capture of the Mau Mau leader Dedan Kimathi in October 1956), Bennett underlines the decisive role played by the army in quashing the rebellion within what was a relatively short period for a counterinsurgency campaign - although the official end of the emergency only came four years later. The issue at hand, then, is not whether the army was effective in countering the insurgency, but rather how it comported itself.' Michael P. M. Finch, The English Historical Review

British Army counterinsurgency campaigns were supposedly waged within the bounds of international law, overcoming insurgents with the minimum force necessary. This revealing study questions what this meant for the civilian population during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in the 1950s, one of Britain's most violent decolonisation wars. For the first time Huw Bennett examines the conduct of soldiers in detail, uncovering the uneasy relationship between notions of minimum force and the colonial tradition of exemplary force where harsh repression was frequently employed as a valid means of quickly crushing rebellion. Although a range of restrained policies such as special forces methods, restrictive rules of engagement and surrender schemes prevented the campaign from degenerating into genocide, the army simultaneously coerced the population to drop their support for the rebels, imposing collective fines, mass detentions and frequent interrogations, often tolerating rape, indiscriminate killing and torture to terrorise the population into submission.

Introduction
1. 'A determined campaign against the terrorist bands'
2. 'Harmonious relations': soldiers, civilians, and committees
3. 'Possibly restrictive to the operations': marginalising international law in colonial rebellions
4. 'The degree of force necessary': British traditions in countering colonial rebellions
5. 'Restraint backed by good discipline'
6. 'A dead man cannot talk': the need for restraint
7. 'A lot of indiscriminate shooting': military repression before Erskine's arrival
8. 'Severe repressive measures': the army under Erskine'
9. 'An essential part of the campaign': civil-military alliances
Conclusion
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Military history [HBW], African history [HBJH], British & Irish history [HBJD1], History [HB]