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Fighting the Mau Mau : the British Army and counter-insurgency in the Kenya Emergency / Huw Bennett

Author:
Bennett, Huw C.
Published:
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Physical Description:
1 online resource (xii, 307 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).
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Series:
Contents:
'A determined campaign against the terrorist bands' -- 'Harmonious relations' : soldiers, civilians, and committees -- 'Possibly restrictive to the operations' : marginalising international law in colonial rebellions -- 'The degree of force necessary' : British traditions in countering colonial rebellions -- 'Restraint backed by good discipline' -- 'A dead man cannot talk' : the need for restraint -- 'A lot of indiscriminate shooting' : military repression before Erskine's arrival -- 'Severe repressive measures' : the army under Erskine -- 'An essential part of the campaign' : civil-military alliances.
Summary:
British Army counterinsurgency campaigns were supposedly waged within the bounds of international law, overcoming insurgents with the minimum force necessary. This revealing study questions what this meant for the civilian population during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in the 1950s, one of Britain's most violent decolonisation wars. For the first time Huw Bennett examines the conduct of soldiers in detail, uncovering the uneasy relationship between notions of minimum force and the colonial tradition of exemplary force where harsh repression was frequently employed as a valid means of quickly crushing rebellion. Although a range of restrained policies such as special forces methods, restrictive rules of engagement and surrender schemes prevented the campaign from degenerating into genocide, the army simultaneously coerced the population to drop their support for the rebels, imposing collective fines, mass detentions and frequent interrogations, often tolerating rape, indiscriminate killing and torture to terrorise the population into submission.
Subject(s):
ISBN:
9781139342506 (ebook)
9781107029705 (hardback)
9781107656246 (paperback)
Note:
Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).
View MARC record | catkey: 34832529