Sarah MedeirosHIS295H5Professor N. Marshall Thursday 24 April 2014The Mau-Mau Uprising: The Preparation for British CounterinsurgencyInsurrections are no stranger to history and have continually proven to be turning points for those populations who they are oppressed or subjugated, usually in the possibility of positive change. However, history books tend to overlook Africa's remarkable political growth in the modern era, even as its people endured centuries of oppression and rebelled in similar ways to the Soviet Union's uprisings in the twentieth century. A strong example of an African political conflict would be between the Mau-Mau and the British in Kenya. The Mau-Mau Rebellion was a civil war fought in Kenya, beginning on 21 October 1952 and ending on 12 January 1960. The rebellion was fought by African rebel groups, the Mau-Mau, against the British government in an attempt to regain the Kenyan land that had been procured from the original owners and permeated by white settlers. Their path to improvement had been blocked by colonialism and the Mau-Mau chose to express their displeasure through violence and upheaval. Following the realization that they had been subjugated in their homeland, the Mau-Mau uprising is a prime example of how African peoples decided to wage war for their freedom. It is an event that revealed how politically aware Kenyans were at the time and how they fought to create their own future away from the colonialist world of which they were slowly becoming prisoners. Beginning in the mid-19th century, European explorers charted sections of central Kenya and began mapping the coasts. Foreigners had lived and ruled on Kenya's soi... middle of paper... for the duration of "Operation Anvil", 20,000 suspected Mau-Mau were taken to screening camps and even greater numbers were forced into reserves unsanitary or designated fields. Many “screening camps” were created where the government had to employ white settlers as temporary officers to exercise its authority. The circumstances within the camps were cruel and all inmates were racially separated based on their color. The white prisoners were cooperative and were sent to the less terrible reservations, the “greys” were considered the radicals involved with the Mau-Mau, but were rather compliant and were transferred to labor camps, while the blacks were seen as extremists. Mau-Maus radicals and were detained individually in specific black camps. Due to the large number of prisoners escorted to these camps monthly, the screening process was usually brutal, tiring and demoralizing.