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The Conversation
Rose Miyonga, Researcher, University of Warwick

Mau Mau: how Kenya’s history of colonial violence speaks through living bodies and graves

The Mau Mau Memorial Monument in Nairobi, Kenya. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Between 1952 and 1963, Kenya experienced one of the most violent chapters in its modern history. The Mau Mau uprising, rooted in land dispossession and political repression under British colonial rule, escalated into a brutal counterinsurgency war.

An estimated 50,000 Kenyans died during the violent conflict between Mau Mau guerrillas and British forces, and from disease and starvation. Torture, sexual violence and forced detention were widespread. Over a million people were displaced into villages and detention camps in the 1950s.

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