Re: [Goanet] While researching Kenya, she found shocking truths about the British empire
The Mau Mau rebellion was the subject of a book by the American scholar Robert B. Edgerton that I copy edited and was published in New York in1989. Pio Gama Pinto is the only Goan mentioned in it, but there must have been others. Frederic, why don't you pose your question on the Africana-Orientlia site? Regards, Victor --- On Thu, 5/20/10, Frederick Noronha fredericknoro...@gmail.com wrote: From: Frederick Noronha fredericknoro...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Goanet] While researching Kenya, she found shocking truths about the British empire To: Goa's premiere mailing list, estb. 1994! goanet@lists.goanet.org Date: Thursday, May 20, 2010, 1:46 PM Any other Goans with links to the Mau Mau? Just curious... FN PS: I have a photocopy of the book(let) on Independent Kenya's First Martyr, i.e. Pio, with me. On 20 May 2010 19:45, Eddie Fernandes eddie.fernan...@gmail.com wrote: From: Frederick Noronha PS: There is a Goan connection with this story. Any guess? [Answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitz_Remedios_Santana_de_Souza] Response: Heard about Pio Gama Pinto? His links to the Mau Mau were far greater than any other Goan! Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pio_Gama_Pinto Eddie Fernandes
Re: [Goanet] While researching Kenya, she found shocking truths
Read this article with interest. It takes an American historian to report these accounts. This report appears while English speaking European, especially British, historians are busy reporting and writing about Black Legend history. This latter history is obviously not too politically sensitive for a writer or publisher in Englsh. Yet it is tragic that these historical archives are available in their own country or former colonies and historians should be discussing these at their national and regional meetings. Goanet is often bombarded with accounts of tortures of the Inquisition in Goa and elsewhere, (in the 17 and 18 century). Yet the English (writing and reading) historians and history buffs (with names like Driscoll) will overlook / ignore / are ignorant of hundreds of stories of tortures committed in worst of these camps, some in grisly detail: castrations, clamping of women's breast with pliers, fatal beating. Equably compelling is her account of the British denial of the truth, which extended form local colonial officials right up though Winston Churchill and his successors, Antony Eden and Harold Macmillan. The intellectual crime TODAY is the cover-up by current British historians of events in their own backyard in the 20th century. These archives should be easily accessible to them. The same can be said of Dutch historians who would rather investigate Spanish-Portugese atrocities in Iberian colonies (which should be reported) than Dutch atrocities in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and Indonesia; or Jewish historians who hate talking and writing about Israel's CONTEMPORARY atrocities within its borders and in its own colony of Gaza and West Bank. Regards, GL Frederick Noronha wrote: While researching Kenya, she found shocking truths about the British empire. Caroline Elkins won a 2006 Pulitzer Prize for her book Imperial Reckoning. (Janet Knott / Globe Staff Photo). ``I was strongly urged by colleagues not to undertake this project, for two reasons, Caroline Elkins said in an interview at her home, not far from the campus. ``One, they felt it was too politically sensitive. Two, they said there wouldn't be enough information. So, me being me, I decided those were good enough reasons to undertake the project. By Elkins's calculations, as many as 320,000 men and women were held in the camps, and as many as 50,000 were killed. Elkins uncovered hundreds of stories of tortures committed in the worst of these camps, some in grisly detail: castrations, clamping of women's breasts with pliers, fatal beatings. Equally compelling is her account of the British denial of the truth, which extended from local colonial officials right up through Winston Churchill and his successors, Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan.
[Goanet] While researching Kenya, she found shocking truths about the British empire
Just curious... how many Goans lived through the Mau Mau days in East Africa? Any memories? FN PS: There is a Goan connection with this story. Any guess? http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2006/07/03/secrets__lies/ While researching Kenya, she found shocking truths about the British empire Caroline Elkins won a 2006 Pulitzer Prize for her book Imperial Reckoning. (Janet Knott / Globe Staff Photo) By David Mehegan, Globe Staff | July 3, 2006 CAMBRIDGE -- Wiry and energetic, the Hugo K. Foster Associate Professor of African Studies at Harvard University coils in her chair and speaks with rapid force about her book that recently won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize. ``I was strongly urged by colleagues not to undertake this project, for two reasons, Caroline Elkins said in an interview at her home, not far from the campus. ``One, they felt it was too politically sensitive. Two, they said there wouldn't be enough information. So, me being me, I decided those were good enough reasons to undertake the project. At 37, Elkins has spent more than 10 years exhuming and writing about the long-hidden story at the heart of ``Imperial Reckoning: the Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya. It's a vivid narrative -- not without its critics -- of oppression, torture, and cover up during the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s, which shows how even a democratic government with humane values can hide the truth of its abominable behavior. Mau Mau was an uprising among the Kikuyu tribe of British Kenya, essentially a response to economic privation due to losses of land at the hands of British settlers. Beginning in 1951 and ending in 1959, the rebellion included an oath of loyalty among adherents, attacks on settlers, and a poorly armed movement based in Kenyan forests. Thirty-two Europeans were killed in rebel attacks. But in the British campaign that followed, thousands of Kikuyu, many of them innocent, were abused, tortured, or killed in a system of camps known as the Pipeline. By Elkins's calculations, as many as 320,000 men and women were held in the camps, and as many as 50,000 were killed. Elkins uncovered hundreds of stories of tortures committed in the worst of these camps, some in grisly detail: castrations, clamping of women's breasts with pliers, fatal beatings. Equally compelling is her account of the British denial of the truth, which extended from local colonial officials right up through Winston Churchill and his successors, Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan. Though British officials lied baldly in Parliament and later burned virtually all the records of the camp system, Elkins reconstructed the story -- including the names and locations of the camps -- using eyewitness accounts, contemporary letters and private documents, and records of the opposition Labor Party's futile resistance to the repression. Most of the chief architects of the camp system, including governor Evelyn Baring, retired from the colonial service with honor and were never held accountable for the abuses. Several senior participants were interviewed by Elkins, and they are unrepentant. After the end of the empire, Elkins writes, people in Britain wanted to put the conflict in the past. After independence in 1963, Kenyan leaders, too, found it convenient to forget about the guerrilla war in the interest of unity, since many abuses were committed by Africans on the British side. Since the longtime ban on the Mau Mau movement was revoked in 2002, renewed discussion of the rebellion has blossomed in Kenya. A group of Kenyan lawyers recently announced a plan to file suit against the British government in coming months. The barbed-wire camps of the Pipeline seem a long way from the leafy environs of Cambridge, where Elkins lives with her husband and two sons. Indeed, she could have stayed comfortably in academia and avoided the gory details of war. Born in New Jersey, she majored in history at Princeton. She had had the usual European and American history courses when she took a course with Robert Tignor, professor of African studies. Fascinated by the continent, she graduated in African history, with highest honors. But she was far from finished. ``What really stood out was her energy and her desire to pursue a difficult career in the face of many challenges, Tignor said by phone. ``We were overwhelmed by her stick-to-itiveness, her ability to tackle archival and personal research. All that comes out clearly in `Imperial Reckoning.' In her senior year, Elkins was researching women in the colonial period, she said, ``and I got to the period of Mau Mau and came to a reference to an all-female detention camp. I was looking for literature on the camp, anything, to write about. I found nothing. I decided that if I went to graduate school, I would write my dissertation on these detention camps. She began her research as a graduate student at Harvard in 1993, continuing for several years and receiving her doctorate in 2001. ``I was going to
Re: [Goanet] While researching Kenya, she found shocking truths about the British empire
From: Frederick Noronha PS: There is a Goan connection with this story. Any guess? [Answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitz_Remedios_Santana_de_Souza] Response: Heard about Pio Gama Pinto? His links to the Mau Mau were far greater than any other Goan! Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pio_Gama_Pinto Eddie Fernandes
Re: [Goanet] While researching Kenya, she found shocking truths about the British empire
Any other Goans with links to the Mau Mau? Just curious... FN PS: I have a photocopy of the book(let) on Independent Kenya's First Martyr, i.e. Pio, with me. On 20 May 2010 19:45, Eddie Fernandes eddie.fernan...@gmail.com wrote: From: Frederick Noronha PS: There is a Goan connection with this story. Any guess? [Answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitz_Remedios_Santana_de_Souza] Response: Heard about Pio Gama Pinto? His links to the Mau Mau were far greater than any other Goan! Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pio_Gama_Pinto Eddie Fernandes
Re: [Goanet] While researching Kenya, she found shocking truths about the British empire
F.N. Just curious... how many Goans lived through the Mau Mau days in East Africa? Any memories? FN Hi Rico, The time setting for this scene is somewhere in the mid fifties to circa 1961. I was a toto then and we lived in Moshi, at the foothills of the Mt. Kilimanjaro. Moshi was very close to the (then) Tanganyika - Kenya border. The British were wary of the Mau-Mau revolution spilling over into Tanganyika as many of her tribes, the Chagas who lived around Moshi were also getting restive. I vaguely remember that Voluntary Civil squads were set up to do night patrolling to shoo away stray Mau-Mau back into Kenya. My neighbour a Khoja gentleman by name of Ramazan was a volunteer and he would proudly wear a pistol and display it to us. By 1961, the call for Uhuru was too strong in Tanganyika and in December 1961, around the time of Goa Liberation, Tanganyika got its independence. Not much of a memory, you would say. But to us Asians living in Tanzania, parents would frighten children by invoking the name Mau-Mau. Stories of Mau-Mau atrocities were rife. Nobody saw them for what they were - freedom fighters rather than a bunch of terrorists. Fear was in the air compounded by rumour. In any communal violence, Asians got the worst of it. They were between the devil and the deep blue sea. These were uncertain times for us. -- \\\ Tony de Sa tonyd...@gmail.com M : +91 9975 162 897 Ph. : +91 832 2470 148 ^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v
