The Agrarian Origins of Mau Mau: A Structural Account The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Bates, Robert H. 1987. The agrarian origins of Mau Mau: a structural account. Agricultural History 61, no. 1: 1-28. Published Version http://www.jstor.org/stable/3743915 Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:3710306 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA The Agrarian Origins of Mau Mau: A StructuralAccount ROBERT H. BATES Unlike most African nations, Kenya came to in- dependence as a result of armed conflict. The insurrectionwas known as the Mau Mau rebellion. If a date is to be placed on the beginning of Mau Mau, it should probably be 1944, when political leaders in the Central Province began to organize a clandestine movement. The organizational device was an oath which bound those who pledged it to the support of the movement. If a date is to be placed on the outbreak of violence, it should probably be October 7, 1952. On that day, members of the move- ment assassinated Senior Chief Waruhiu as he returned from an official visit to the central offices of the government in Nairobi. In response, the Governor of Kenya declared a state of emergency, banned the majorAfri- can political organizations, and detained their leaders. Calling in British militaryfrom the Middle East, the government rapidlyoccupied the terri- tories controlled by the Mau Mau rebellion and began to hunt their armed units down. The campaign lasted four years; the state of emergency sev- eral years longer. By 1956, over 12,000 Africans had been detained and over 4,000 killed or wounded. ROBERTH. BATESis Professor of PoliticalScience, DukeUniversity. Research on this article was completed while he was a Fellow at the Institutefor Development Studies of the University of Nairobi;the Instituteof Development Studies of the Universityof Sussex; and the Centerfor Advanced Study in the BehavioralSciences at Stanford, California.During the period in which this work was completed, his research was supported by the CaliforniaInstitute of Technology, the Institute of Development Studies, the Center for Advanced Study, the Social Science Re- search Council,the National Science Foundation[Grants No. SE 582-16870 and BNS 801 1495], the Exxon Corporation,the Haynes Foundation,Duke University, and the Guggenheim Founda- tion. None is responsible for the contents of this article. He wishes to acknowledge the gener- ous criticisms of John Lonsdale, Greet Kershaw, Michael Redley, Stanley Engerman, Joel Silbey, Allan Bogue, George Tsebelis, BarryWeingast, and two anonymous referees. All dis- sented vigorously from points in this article, and none is responsible for its contents. agricultural history volume 61 * number 1 * winter 1987. ? agriculturalhistory society 1 2 agricultural history This article analyzes the origins of the Mau Mau rebellion. It focuses on the agrarian origins of the economic grievances that made rural dwellers available to those who sought to mobilize them into a political rebellion. The focus is narrow. The article omits from consideration the urban wing of the Mau Mau revolt and cultural issues which politically alienated rural Kenyans from the colonial order. By focusing on the "demand for rebel- lion," it also omits from consideration the supply of political organization: the dynamics which led elite level politicians to seek to organize a rural political base. Those concerned with the urban, cultural, or political dy- namics of the revolt are referred to sources listed in the notes to this article.' As noted by John Spencer, the Mau Mau rebellion spread geographi- cally in a "V." The "apex" lay in Nairobi. The left arm extended northward into the White Settler farming areas of the Rift Valley Province; the right arm into Kiambu, Fort Hall and Nyeri Districts-the districts which to- gether formed the Kikuyu reserve (see map). Dividing the two arms were the Aberdare (or more properly the Nyandarua) mountains, in which the armed forces of Mau Mau took refuge and from which they launched many of their attacks on the settlement below. Spencer's image of the configuration of the revolt, with its Rift Valley and Central Province wings and Nairobi apogee, suggests what other sources tend to confirm: that the Mau Mau rebellion was overwhelmingly a Kikuyu rebellion. The rebellion possessed two key rural foci: the Kikuyu who worked in the commercial farms of the White Highlands and the Kikuyu who remained behind in the reserves. A central thesis of this article is that common forces tied together the two wings of the rebellion; both the "squatter wing" and the wing in the "reserves" responded to dynam- ics whose origins lay in Kikuyu tribal society. Mau Mau has generated an enormous literature; one bibliography alone notes over 200 secondary sources.2 The magnitude of this literature suggests the magnitude of the passions that spawned the rebellion. This article seeks to cut through the passion and the turmoil of the events surrounding the rebellion and to highlight the simple underlying structure which generated the grievances which fueled the revolt. We therefore begin with a "model" of Kikuyu society. From our under- 1. The best analysis is contained in the superb work of John Spencer, The KAU: The Kenyan African Union (London: KPI, 1985). Much of the preceeding exposition is from Spencer's book. See, however, the critical review by DavidThroup, "Moderates, Militants and Mau Mau: African Politics in Kenya, 1944-1952," unpublished. Also invaluable to all discus- sions of Mau Mau is M.P.K.Sorrenson, Land Reform in KikuyuCountry (London: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 1967), a work which has strongly influenced my own. 2. MarshallS. Clough and KernellA. Jackson, Jr. Mau Mau Syllabus: Parts I and II (Stan- dard, CA: Mimeographed, 1975). D` Nau RuK vcl MT KENYA i?-^__^ \ \ \ NA tiRt / OO/d < DiSTRi Ri RIFT VALLEY PROVINCE NYERI ICT \No<..\ j^-^ E/7IS CENTRAL PROVINCE Km .Na.vasha^angopS^ Fu.tHfOrtHJII1 * \^^KIAMBU J/N /H * ? ?n<dS\l \ NI--RJ.DISKRICT Source: Donald L. Barnettand KarariNjama, Mau Mau From Within(New Yorkand London: Monthly Revue Press, 1966). 4 agricultural history standing of Kikuyusociety, we account for the subsequent population of the white highlands with cattle-owning squatters.3 We then "shock" the model by altering one of its fundamental parameters: the ratioof people to land. We thereby derive the conditions that led to the massive politicaland legal struggles that generated the eastern wing of the Mau Maumovement. For the purposes of this analysis, the most parsimonious "model" of Kikuyusociety which serves our purposes would include social values, institutional rules, and economic endowments.4 The key cultural values that are relevant to this analysis were the desire to accumulate resources that were highly valued but scarce and the ten- dency to evaluate personal happiness in terms of future, long-distant states. The critical institutions included the mbari, or kin-based units for the acquisition, development, and holding of land; bridewealth, by which cattle and livestock were exchanged for marriage partners; polygamy; and a system of age grade councils, which led to the control of property and authority by those who were geneologically senior. The economic features include that the economic environment of the Kikuyuwas agrar- ian; that it contained two major economic activities-arable and livestock production; and that these activities requireddifferent proportions of land and labor. Initially,labor was relatively scarce and land abundant. Taken together, these features formed a "system" of tribal life, one which helps explain the peopling of the White Highlands with Kikuyu squatters and one which, when subject to fundamental changes, provoked feelings of grievance and outrage and generated demands for political action. 3. At a later point in this paper we will examine white farming in the highlandsand discuss the problem of the squatters there. It is relevant here to note that the CarterCommission determined in 1933 that there were a total of 150,000 squatters and that 110,000 of them were Kikuyu.A survey of squatters in 1947 placed their number at 202,944, more than half of whom were Kikuyu.In that year, more than one sixth of the Kikuyupopulation were squatters. See Colony and Protectorate of Kenya, A Discussion of the Problems of the Squatter (Nairobi: Government Printer,1947), 3-4. 4. This discussion is largely drawn from H.E.Lambert, Kikuyu Social and PoliticalInstitu- tions (London: Oxford University Press, 1956); H.E. Lambert,The Systems of Land Tenurein the KikuyuLand Unit (Cape Town: The Universityof Cape Town, 1950); M.W.H.Beech, "The KikuyuSystem of Land Tenure,"Journal of the AfricanSociety 17 (1917);Apollo Njonjo, "The Africanizationof the 'White Highlands':A Study in AgrarianClass Struggles in Kenya, 1950- 1974," (Ph.D.dissertation, PrincetonUniversity, 1974); Sorrenson, LandReform; J. Middleton, The Central Tribes of the North-EasternBantu (London: InternationalAfrican Institute, 1953); L.S.B. Leakey, The Southern KikuyuBefore 1903, Vols. I-IlI (London:Academic Press, 1977); Greet Kershaw, "The Land is the People: A Study of KikuyuSocial Organizationin Historical Perspective,"(Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, December 1972);and GodfreyMuriuki, A Historyof the Kikuyu,1500-1900 (Nairobi:Oxford University Press, 1974).A very fine discus- sion also contained in DavidThroup, "The Construction and Destructionof the KenyattaState," unpublished. 5 Agrarian Origins of Mau Mau Endowments, Values, and Institutions. Initially,land was abundant and people scarce. Given the values of the Kikuyu,then, a major social aspira- tion was to accumulate dependents by forming a large family with many children.