Histories of the Hanged

About the book

Anderson's work reveals how, in the course of suppressing the Mau Mau revolt, Kenya's British rulers were responsible for thousands of unjustifiable killings, for gross abuses of both their own law and the laws of war, and for what are possibly the most brutal episodes of legal and physical oppression in twentieth-century imperial history.

Uncovering thousands of new files and court transcripts, Anderson shows that the British, with the knowledge of both Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan, committed untold atrocities against Kenyan subjects, putting over 70,000 people in prison camps and sending hundreds to the gallows without proper trial.

In 1952, after years of tension and bitterness, the grievances of the Gikuyu people of central Kenya exploded into open rebellion. The book tells the story of the dirty war Britain fought in Kenya in the run-up to independence in 1963.

Between 1953 and 1956 Britain sent over a thousand Kenyans to the gallows, often on trumped-up or non-existent charges. Anderson gives a full and convincing account of a war in which all sides behaved badly, so few of the combatants can be either fully excused or blamed. These events are still within living memory, and eyewitness testimony is the backbone of this controversial story.