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  • From Mau Mau to Middlesex?The Fate of Europeans in Independent Kenya
  • Gavin Nardocchio-Jones (bio)

Whether writing about the neocolonial aspirations of European powers or the desires for freedom within indigenous nations, the historiography of African decolonization often echoes contemporary preoccupations. In the period immediately after rapid decolonization, postcolonial theorists such as Frantz Fanon were celebrated for their ideas on the strength of the colonized and the oppression of the colonizers.1 Subsequently, African colonial historiography has gone through many phases, including optimism for the nationalist project, disillusionment about the African state, and fears for the weakness of society in the postcolonial setting.2 With the end of the Cold War and the spread of concerns about globalization, terrorism, and American empire, historical focus has once again returned to the dialectic of Western neocolonialism, African corruption, and the problem of "failed states."3

Within Anglophone colonial historiography, most studies have engaged with the legacy of decolonization on the periphery and the indigenous populations therein. Several recent studies, however, have also begun to examine decolonization, colonial migration, and the postindependence period from cultural perspectives.4 It is now becoming clear how the loss of Great Britain's colonies affected metropolitan politics, demography, and national identity.5 Even so, as Stuart Ward has said, "there remains a firmly entrenched assumption that the broad cultural impact of decolonization was confined to the colonial periphery, with little relevance to post-war British culture and society."6 The dominance of these competing perspectives has also caused most scholars to overlook an important aspect of the British imperial experience—the fate of Europeans in Britain's settler colonies during and after decolonization. The postindependence history of Europeans in British colonies of the "African type," "where overseas settlement expels an indigenous peasant population from the best land, but remains dependent on the labor of that same population,"7 has remained obscured because of either political taboos or historical fashion. [End Page 491]

This constitutes something of a British exception, since in Francophone and Lusophone histories of decolonization Europeans play an integral part in the developing legacy of colonialism.8 It is not just that these narratives are based on the attitudes of settlers during decolonization or on aspects of settler control over the colonial political economy, for similar themes can be found in the British literature. Francophone and Lusophone narratives also stress the effect that returning settler populations have on politics and culture in the metropole—shattering governments, severely affecting demography, and altering political dynamics. In France, the Algerian crisis forced the fall of the Fourth Republic in 1958, the mass exodus of the entire European population after independence in 1962, and the transformation of the political landscape in the metropole, all of which still resonate today.9

Did Britain have to cope with settler communities hostile to the decolonization of its African colonies? Was there a mass exodus of Europeans back to Britain at independence? This essay explores these questions by examining the unique case of Kenya. This colony is particularly suited to an examination of this kind because Kenya, like Algeria, Angola, and Mozambique, endured the most significant scenes of violence in the metropole's colonial experience in Africa—the Mau Mau insurgency.10 However, when one examines the procedures and legacies of the decolonization process in Kenya, there is a stark difference with any of the other settler colonies that experienced high levels of violence before independence. Whether one takes the cases of Algeria, Angola, Madagascar, Mozambique, or the Rhodesias, colonial violence and decolonization were usually followed by the near complete evacuation of the European population, who feared violent retribution from the native populations. Particularly where one or more of the insurgent groups eventually became the de facto negotiating partner and inheritor of state control, European settlers and administrators tended to migrate rapidly and in large numbers. This essay will show that, contrary to the popular perception that a mass exodus of Europeans from Kenya occurred as a result of preindependence violence, this did not happen. In spite of an entrenched European population, a prolonged military campaign against what was perceived as an atavistic and nationalist movement, and a firm settler opposition to...

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