Colony to Nation: British Administration in Kenya, 1940-1963

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John Johnson, ed. Colony to Nation: British Administration in Kenya, 1940-1963. Banham, Norfolk: The Erskine Press, 2002. 300 pp. Illustrations. Map. Index. $14.95. Paper. An earlier generation of African historians, forged in the mid-twentieth century, often ignored history. When it was given attention, it was frequently cast as only a period of oppression in efforts to create a paradigm of modern African history rooted in vicitimization. This perspective was strongly influenced by African independence movements of the 1950s and 1960s, and a laudable desire to give African history a rightful voice. However, this approach often overlooked the intricate threads of continuity between the and postindependence eras, and the need to listen to a diversity of voices in order to achieve a fuller telling of events. In her recently published book, Twilight on the Zambezi: Late Colonialism in Central Africa (Palgrave, 2002), Eugenia W. Herbert cogently refers to recent efforts on the part of younger historians to make colonial history an integral part of African history as one attempts to piece together the intricate patterns of continuity and change (xxi). This closing of the historical circle between the and postindependence eras is nowhere more dramatically evident than in the recent creation of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation devoted to the education of South Africa's poor. In helping to create this new foundation, former South African President Nelson Mandela has sought to bring historical continuity between his country's past and present in the interests of its future. The fusion of these two names, which would have been viewed as an oxymoron two decades ago, is a powerful symbol of the need to recognize a past and to admit it into current collective consciousness. Although archival records can significantly inform an understanding of colonial-era history in sub-Saharan Africa, it is only through the voices of participants themselves that one can find a fuller dimensionality to what actually occurred. Unfortunately, many of those voices have not been widely heard over the past several decades except when mustered in support of the vicitimization model of African history. However, that is rapidly changing. Works such as Anthony Kirk-Green's On Crown Service: A History of HM Colonial and Overseas Services, 18377 -1997 (I.B.Tauris, 1999), Eugenia W. Herbert's Twilight on the Zambezi, and Heather J. Sharkey's Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (California, 2003) represent an important direction in African historiography in that they demonstrate clearly the vast diversity of perspectives, attitudes, and values among both administrators and subjects. We now know, although we should have known all along, that the administration in places such as Kenya was less a centrally controlled chain of command and more a collection of independent local decision-making processes, framed by broad parameters and heavily influenced by the views and reactions of the administered. …