The Fight for Freedom; Two new books re-examine Kenya's Mau Mau rebellion.(Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya)(Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire)(Book Review)

Byline: John Ness

On April 24, 1954, Nairobi residents woke up in the middle of a military purge. They had been living under a government-declared state of emergency for a year and a half, thanks to lethal ambushes by Mau Mau terrorists intent on reclaiming their land from British settlers. Now the crackdown came in earnest. "Loudspeakers affixed to military vehicles blared directives: pack one bag, leave the rest of your belongings at home, and exit into the street peacefully," writes Caroline Elkins in "Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya" (476 pages. Henry Holt ). Every African in the sprawling city was questioned. Kenyan informers wearing hoods to hide their identities needed only to nod at a suspect for that person to be pulled out of line and trucked to a detention camp. By the end of the year, there were 52,000 political prisoners in "The Pipeline"--a system of camps designed to crush the rebellion.

Elkins's book, along with David Anderson's "Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire" (406 pages. W.W. Norton ), is part of a timely re-examination of Kenya's war against the Mau Mau insurgency of the mid-'50s. Though neither author is Kenyan, both books seem less the product of recently declassified documents than of the newly proud political spirit blowing through the country--evidenced last week by Kenyan Justice Minister Kiraitu Murungi's demand that Britain formally apologize for its colonial treatment of the Mau Maus. Elkins, an assistant professor of history at Harvard, spent years interviewing survivors from both sides of the war; Anderson, who teaches at Oxford, came across his best finds sifting through old files. The result is that while Elkins better explains the horror show of the gulag, Anderson is the superior guide to murky road there.

Though the Mau Maus' history may be unknown to some readers, the arc of this story is familiar. Like Iraq's Sunni insurgents, the Mau Maus were a powerful minority that killed Westerners and "collaborators." Like the Bush administration, Britain's colonial rulers flouted international conventions against torture and indefinite detainment when dealing with such "terrorists." Most Brits dismissed the torture accusations because they believed in the goodness of their troops. The net result was a crushed ...