October 2022 marks the 70th anniversary of the declaration of State of Emergency in Kenya by the colonial government. The declaration followed from the need to crush the rise of an armed Mau Mau movement, an anti-colonial struggle in the colony’s central and Rift valley regions.
International Conference on the 70th Anniversary of the British Declaration of State of Emergency in Kenya in 1952
This conference provides scholars, in the global North and South alike, an opportunity, to reflect, once more, on Kenya’s colonial history. It is also a welcome window for the academy to take stock of recent scholarship on the ‘meanings’ of this declaration then and now: literally, the present of the past! Equally, the emergency period creates room for discursive notions mainly on the didactic Mau Mau historiography to open up vistas for novel research.
Theme: “Recasting Mau Mau Discourse: Reflections on the Declaration of the State of Emergency 70 years later.”
The aim of the conference will be to debate individual papers and provide opportunity to share fresh reflections and re-evaluations of this episode in Kenya’s history and the subsequent developments that have a bearing on it. Have the aspirations of Mau Mau been met, how, and if not, why?
