Britain, Kenya and the Cold War

'David Percox tells us, for the first time, and from intimate, previously secret, primary sources, the fascinating early history of this military relationship between Britain and Kenya. Kenya was never merely a 'Happy Valley' of aristocratic white settlement. In the First World War it was the base from which the Kaiser was driven out of East Africa and, in the Second, from which Mussolini was ejected from Ethiopia. The British army re-learned its guerrilla tactics in order to defeat Mau Mau in Kenya's forests, and looked to a Kenya base for conducting an 'East of Suez' strategy during the Cold War. No wonder the British protected and armed the man they had most feared, Jomo Kenyatta, erstwhile 'leader to darkness and death' transformed into robust Cold War ally. Percox ends this first-rate study by giving neo-colonialism a precise, ironic, and martial meaning.' - John Lonsdale, Emeritus Professor of Modern African History, University of Cambridge; 'The historical study of Kenya's decolonization, always a popular topic in African historiography, has reached a new stage... David Percox, drawing on newly accessible colonial records at the British Public Record Office and concentrating on defence and security issues, argues that the pathway to the transfer of power was far from the orderly one that recent historical studies have proposed.' - Robert Tignor, Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, Princeton University