-colonialism was about ending the slave trade
-Britain simply wanted to bring about Christianity
-the West led by Britain wanted to bring a Protestant work ethic and end the brutishness of the typical native lifestyle of indolence and debauchery
Despite the fact that HMG didn't dispute one of the 5 plaintiffs had been castrated and the lone woman among them sexually assaulted with a bottle these sentiments are typical of the British mindframe:
Why is it that the establishment (Lib/Lab/Con) seeming to be hell bent on apologizing to the whole world and paying compensation just for being British? What next apologize to the Ducth for taking New Amsterdam and renaming it New York?http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/405456/UK-Goverment-to-pay-14m-to-tortured-Mau-Mau#comments
If were on that track my American wife would like compensation for all the colonists killed during the American war of independence. :-)
Of course, got it now. This has been a but bare for Kenya for a long time, so appease these lot and in return, what do we get - have a guess..........that's right folks, oil again. New fields found recently and we need to keep out the Yanks, Russians, Chinese amongst other big European companies. If it's true, fair play. If not, a disgrace.
In truth,Johnny Brit was a benign coloniser compared to the Belgians who killed millions in the Congo;or the Italians who used poison gas against the Ethiopians when they invaded in 1935 or the Portuguese who used whipping as late as the seventies when they finally lost their last African holdings in Angola and Mozambique.
Despite this fact Kenya was a colony,a settler colony which meant that unlike Nigeria,Ghana or even Uganda the colonialism was of necessity a much harder variety to ensure the rights and privileges of the invader over the natives. The latter was a labourer for the former-nothing more nothing less who wasn't allowed to grow cash crops until the very eve of independence. More often than not he was landless or pushed onto tiny family plots on overcrowded native reserves,which is where excess labour was domiciled.
Contrary to prevailing Mainstream Media mythology there were immediate post independence gains in all social indicators. Child mortality fell, longevity and school & hospital building programs increased dramatically giving the lie to claims about 'altruism and the essential nobility of colonialism'. Until today national development is only along a 200 km corridor either side of the Kisumu/Mombasa railway-to export (loot) the colony's goods and services. Only now has serious effort been made to correct this iniquitous situation with a major development of N.Kenya with a road and pipeline.
One hopes this episode will force a reexamination of the histories in other ex colonies. Malaysia lost 10,000 dead in their own sanguinary decolonisation of the fifties. The Indians lost 5 mn Bengalis when the genocidal Churchill confiscated their food and let them starve during WW2 to quell their famously troublesome political spirit. The Nigerians still insist the Brits sabotaged their early nationhood by rigging the vote to fix heir favourite Hausa/Fulani clique in power as proxies........the list is long.
One can't be too hard on the morally schizophrenic Brit commenters above;they're simply victims of decades of indoctrination by 'court poetry' and 'official history.' Anyone wanting well researched unvarnished accounts of the Mau Mau insurgency should read 'Histories of the Hanged' and/or 'Britain's Gulag:The brutal end of Empire in Kenya.'
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