A tapestry of African histories : with longer times and wider geopolitics

390 Pages·2021·32.625 MB·English

by  Nicholas K. Githuku (editor)

A Tapestry of
African Histories
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A Tapestry of
African Histories
With Longer Times
and Wider Geopolitics
Edited by
Nicholas K. Githuku
LEXINGTON BOOKS
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
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Published by Lexington Books
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www .rowman .com
86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE
Copyright © 2021 by Nicholas K. Githuku
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Githuku, Nicholas K. (Nicholas Kariuki), editor, author.
Title: A tapestry of African histories : with longer times and wider geopolitics / edited
by Nicholas K. Githuku.
Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2021] | Includes index. | Summary: “This book
studies African history through a geopolitically transcendent lens that brings African
countries into conversation with other relevant histories both within and outside of
the continent. The collection analyzes historical figures, struggles for independence
and stability, social and economic development, and legal and human rights issues”—
Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021039579 | ISBN 9781793623935 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781793623942 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Africa, Eastern—History. | Africa, Eastern—Historiography.
Classification: LCC DT365.5 | DDC 967.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021039579
∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
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Contents
Foreword vii
Daniel Branch
Introduction: The Future of History: Transtemporal,
Transnational across Geographical Borders xiii
Nicholas K. Githuku
1 On Writing Kenya’s History 1
John M. Lonsdale
2 From the Upper Delaware River to the Banks of
the Monongahela via Lake Victoria 21
Robert M. Maxon
3 Myth and Reality in the Forging of a Kenyan
National History: Oginga Odinga’s Heroism 43
Robert M. Maxon
4 Daniel arap Moi: A Challenge for Historians 63
Robert M. Maxon
5 Ainsworth after Dark: The Pied Piper of African
Development in Colonial Kenya, 1895–1920? 87
Okia Opolot
6 Challenge to African Democracy: The Activism
and Assassination of Pio Gama Pinto 113
Godriver Wanga-Odhiambo
v
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vi Contents
7 Eastlands, Nairobi: Memory, History, and Recovery 135
Betty Wambui
8 Plagues and Pestilences in Late Nineteenth-Century
Samburuland 161
George L. Simpson, Jr., and Peter Waweru
9 The Evolution of Imperial Social Development Policy
and Practice in British Sudan: A Comparative Case Study
of the Gezira and Zande Schemes 179
Joseph M. Snyder
10 Illusions about a Boom in Cotton Production in
Southern Nyanza during the Depression, 1929–1939 203
Peter Odhiambo Ndege
11 Community Development in Post-Independence Malawi:
Deciphering Some Local Voices 223
Gift Wasambo Kayira
12 Regime Policing and the Stifling of the Human Rights
Agenda: Late Colonial and Postcolonial Malawi, 1948–Present 245
Paul Chiudza Banda
13 The Constitution and Change-the-Constitution Debate
in Independent Kenya, 1963–2002 269
Anne Kisaka Nangulu
14 The Building Bridges Initiative Déjà Vu: “A Whitewash
Process Taking Us Forward by Taking Us Backwards” 293
Nicholas K. Githuku and Robert M. Maxon
15 House of Mlungula—“Norms in the Margins and
Margins of the Norm”: Of Computer “Glitches,”
Moving Human Fingers and Illicit Financial Flows 317
Nicholas K. Githuku
Index 345
About the Contributors 355
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Foreword
Daniel Branch
This book is a touching and necessary effort to mark a career spent well. It
is an excellent volume in its own right, full of verve and original thought.
Running through its pages, however, is a highly successful effort by its edi-
tor and contributors to repay intellectual debts to Professor Robert Maxon.
Taking his own scholarship in isolation—not least his contributions here—
Maxon is a fine historian and one worthy of the praise contained within the
various chapters here. But this book is also a tribute to Maxon the collabora-
tor, the mentor, and the editor. In these various roles, Maxon has made key
contributions to the history of Kenya and the wider region. The gratitude
expressed to Maxon by the authors and editor is made on behalf of a much
larger community of scholars.
Although three of the contributors address topics beyond the borders of
Kenya (and all the papers have important arguments to make to generalist
readers), the primary focus of the book is rightly on Kenya. It is there where
Maxon has left the greatest impression; all of the country’s historians are
indebted to Maxon, not just the readers of his work, those he mentored, or his
collaborators. Put simply, the historical profession in Kenya would look very
different were it not for Maxon. There are few academics about which such
a claim would be justified.
The most obvious of Maxon’s influences on the historiography and aca-
demic practice of history is through his own scholarship. Maxon has made
several key interventions to the study of the history of Kenya and the wider
region. His autobiographical chapter in this book describes his intellectual
and personal engagement with Kenya in typically modest terms. Yet as a
historian of agriculture, social and economic change, the establishment of the
colonial state, and, most recently, the country’s constitutional history, Maxon
has helped extend our understanding of complex but critically important
vii
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viii Daniel Branch
themes in Kenya’s history. He has done so in various ways, perhaps most
notably his study of the colonial state-building of John Ainsworth.1 However,
given this volume, it is his contributions to edited collections, both as editor
and author, that deserve greatest attention.
As a tribute to Maxon’s scholarship, this collaborative volume could not be
more fitting. His co-authored chapter here with Nick Githuku and the wider
book are wholly in keeping with the way Maxon has worked as a historian.
Maxon is a key member of a golden generation of scholars of Kenya. His entry
into this group was marked by his 1973 contribution to the Kenya Historical
Review, the journal of the Historical Association of Kenya.2 Through that
journal and the efforts of other publishing ventures, most notably perhaps the
history list of the East African Publishing House, during the 1960s and 1970s
historians from Kenya and overseas professionalised the study of the coun-
try’s past. However, for all the great monographs and journal articles of this
era, one of the most striking aspects of the work of this group of historians
was their collaborative effort to jointly produce several landmark texts in the
historiography of the country. Following a tradition established by Bethwell
Ogot’s Hadith series from the late 1960s and 1970s, key edited collections
in the 1980s and 1990s sustained Kenyan history writing through the darkest
days of the rule of Daniel arap Moi.
As his biographical chapter in this volume explains, Maxon was a key part
of these joint efforts. His survey chapter on the history of agriculture, for
instance, is an invaluable contribution to William Ochieng’s 1990 Themes on
Kenyan History, which also includes key contributions by William Ochieng’
and Tabitha Kanogo.3 Alongside Kanogo, Ochieng’, and Bethwell Ogot,
Maxon contributed two chapters—one on the colonial conquest and the other
on post-colonial economic and social development—to Ochieng’s excellent
2002 collection on the history of Western Kenya, itself a tribute to Gideon
Were.4 With Ochieng’, Maxon edited one of the precious few efforts to pro-
duce an economic history of Kenya, writing four of the chapters himself and
co-authoring a fifth with Kanogo.5
The highlight of Maxon’s collaborative work is undoubtedly his contri-
butions to Ochieng’ and Ogot’s pathbreaking collection, Decolonization
and Independence in Kenya, 1940-93. More than twenty-five years from its
publication, the book remains one of the key texts on the history of decolo-
nizing and post-colonial Kenya. Its contributors—Ogot, Ochieng’, E.S.
Atieno Odhiambo, Wunyabari Maloba, and Ndege—are still counted by their
peers as being among the most influential scholars in the Kenyan historical
profession, some sadly posthumously. Maxon was a fitting member of the
writing group for this landmark volume. With an outstanding chapter of his
own on social and cultural change in Kenya between independence and the
death of Jomo Kenyatta, Maxon also co-authored a second with Ndege, who
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Foreword ix
completed his PhD at West Virginia University under Maxon’s guidance.6
The piece with Ndege on the impact of structural adjustment on the Kenyan
economy and politics typifies the very best of Maxon’s work. Empirically
sharp and judicious in its analysis, it is an outstanding example of Maxon’s
determination to historicise contemporary debate.
Given their previous work together, the inclusion in this volume of Peter
Ndege’s chapter on the Nyanza cotton boom of the late 1930s is particularly
noteworthy. Ndege’s inclusion was given further poignancy by his passing
in July 2021. His chapter here is an illustration of the fragility of our con-
nection to the pioneering generation of historians who created the field of
Kenyan history. Maxon himself remains one such connection, as does John
Lonsdale, another contributor here. In his chapter, Lonsdale reminds us of
the challenges that Kenya’s historians are facing and reflects on the relative
comfort enjoyed by those of us who write about the country’s past from the
comfort of positions overseas. At times in Kenya’s past, the writing of his-
tory by Kenyans has been considered by the state to be subversive. Individual
historians and academic departments were under pressure as a result. Some
historians fled into exile, others remained at home but were silenced.
Through good times and bad, Maxon has worked hard to support his
Kenyan colleagues and their scholarship. The importance of Maxon’s work
with the Moi University, the University of Nairobi, Maseno University, the
Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology, and the Catholic
University of Eastern Africa cannot be overstated. His development of col-
laborative PhD programmes with those universities, and others since, has
helped forge a generation of historians who have shaped our understanding
of Kenya’s past. The work of some of this cohort is wonderfully showcased
here. Not least because of Maxon’s efforts (and as the contributions to this
book demonstrate), and despite continuing challenges, Kenya’s own histori-
ans are thriving, both at home and overseas.
That point is reiterated repeatedly through this book by its Kenyan con-
tributors, all colleagues or former students of Maxon who exhibit his imprint
in one way or another. From community development in Malawi to financial
crime in Kenya, the range of the book is impressive. Thoroughly researched
and provocatively argued, this volume provides a rich seam of historical
research that exhibits many of the same characteristics which define Maxon’s
own work. Anne Nangulu’s chapter, for instance, engages directly with
Maxon’s efforts to situate the political debates around constitutional reform
within the country’s wider political context. Nangulu’s chapter is evidence
of the continuing strength of one aspect of Kenyan historiography: direct
engagement by historians with the political debates of the present. Githuku
and Maxon’s chapter on the Building Bridges Initiative is another such
example. But the chapters speak to a wide range of themes and approaches.
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