Since independence from Great Britain in 1963, Kenya has survived five decades as a functioning nation-state, holding regular elections; its borders and political system intact and avoiding open war with its neighbours and military rule internally. It has been a favoured site for Western aid, trade, investment and tourism and has remained a close security partner for Western governments. However, Kenya's successive governments have failed to achieve adequate living conditions for most of its citizens; violence, corruption and tribalism have been ever-present, and its politics have failed to transcend its history. The decisions of the early years of independence and the acts of its leaders in the decades since have changed the country's path in unpredictable ways, but key themes of conflicts remain: over land, money, power, economic policy, national autonomy and the distribution of resources between classes and communities.While the country's political institutions have remained stable, the nation has changed, its population increasing nearly five-fold in five decades. But the economic and political elite's struggle for state resources and the exploitation of ethnicity for political purposes still threaten the country's existence. Today, Kenyans are arguing over many of the issues that divided them 50 years ago. The new constitution promulgated in 2010 provides an opportunity for national renewal, but it must confront a heavy legacy of history. This book reveals that history.

Nearly four decades ago, Terence Ranger questioned to what extent African history was actually African, and whether methods and concerns derived from Western historiography were really sufficient tools for researching and narrating African history. Despite a blossoming and branching out of Africanist scholarship in the last twenty years, that question is still haunting. The most prestigious locations for production of African studies are outside Africa itself, and scholars still seek a solution to this paradox. They agree that the ideal solution would be a flowering of institutions of higher learning within Africa which would draw not only Africanist scholars, but also financial resources to the continent. While the focus of this volume is on historical knowledge, the effort to make African scholarship "more African" is fundamentally interdisciplinary. The essays in this volume employ several innovative methods in an effort to study Africa on its own terms. The book is divided into four parts. Part 1, "Africanizing African History," offers several diverse methods for bringing distinctly African modes of historical discourse to the foreground in academic historical research. Part 2, "African Creative Expression in Context," presents case studies of African art, literature, music, and poetry. It attempts to strip away the exotic or primitivist aura such topics often accumulate when presented in a foreign setting in order to illuminate the social, historical, and aesthetic contexts in which these works of art were originally produced. Part 3, "Writing about Colonialism," demonstrates that the study of imperialism in Africa remains a springboard for innovative work, which takes familiar ideas about Africa and considers them within new contexts. Part 4, "Scholars and Their Work," critically examines the process of African studies itself, including the roles of scholars in the production of knowledge about Africa. This timely and thoughtful volume will be of interest to African studies scholars and students who are concerned about the ways in which Africanist scholarship might become "more African."

This book is a compilation of oral histories about the movement of Luo and some Bantu-speaking peoples. It includes histories of many clans or ethnic groups, and how drought, warfare, disease, and competition over pastoral resources in western Kenya forced them to look for a land that they could call their own. Highly entertaining, the stories cross over from pre-colonial to post-colonial eras, with tales of fooling the colonial officers, winning battles and producing miracles. Although warriors and chiefs play a critical part in the stories so too do unlikely actors such as women, prophets, and common farmers. As one of the elders put it, "Without history you are like wild animals... you need to know where you came from and who you are." People with kinship connections to the ethnic groups represented here will delight in the references to places, people, kin groups and events. Residents of western Kenya will be able to trace some of their genealogies to North Mara and vice versa. Historians and anthropologists will find in this book a rich primary source for their own research. Those interested in cultural change will find this a fascinating case of Luo assimilation: events chronicled in this book are still underway and observable in communities today. Producing the text in both Swahili and English ensures that local people will have access to these histories for their own learning and on-going discussions about the past.

This collection of essays on pre-colonial sub-Saharan African military history is drawn from a number of academic journals and includes some which are considered milestones in African historiographical discourse, as well as others which, while lesser known, provide remarkable insight into the unique nature of African military history. Selections were made so as to produce an introduction to the understudied field of pre-colonial African military history that will be useful to specialists and non-specialists alike. The volume also contains an introduction which presents one of the first significant reviews of pre-colonial African military historiography ever attempted.

This book analyses the ethnic conflict that engulfed Kenya’s Rift Valley Province at the turn of the nineties when multi-party democratic politics were being reintroduced in the country. Its central thesis is that ethnic conflict in the country then was a function of several issues, among them ethnocentrism, politics, the land question and criminal behaviour in certain circles. Both its determinants and consequences are demographic, economic, political and socio-cultural, implying the risks involved in oversimplifying issues.