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“Mau Mau are Angels … Sent by Haile Selassie”: A Kenyan War in Jamaica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2020

Myles Osborne*
Affiliation:
History, University of Colorado Boulder

Abstract

This article traces the impact of Kenya's Mau Mau uprising in Jamaica during the 1950s. Jamaican responses to Mau Mau varied dramatically by class: for members of the middle and upper classes, Mau Mau represented the worst of potential visions for a route to black liberation. But for marginalized Jamaicans in poorer areas, and especially Rastafari, Mau Mau was inspirational and represented an alternative method for procuring genuine freedom and independence. For these people, Mau Mau epitomized a different strand of pan-Africanism that had most in common with the ideas of Marcus Garvey. It was most closely aligned with, and was the forerunner of, Walter Rodney, Stokely Carmichael, and Black Power in the Caribbean. Theirs was a more radical, violent, and black-focused vision that ran alongside and sometimes over more traditional views. Placing Mau Mau in the Jamaican context reveals these additional levels of intellectual thought that are invisible without its presence. It also forces us to rethink the ways we periodize pan-Africanism and consider how pan-African linkages operated in the absence of direct contact between different regions.

Type
Insurgent Youth
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History

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122 See, for instance, “Police Called In: Bearded Terrorists,” Star, 16 Apr. 1953: 1.

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141 TNA: CO 1031/2767, Extract from Jamaica LSIC Report, Sept. 1959.

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143 “Henry, Gabbidon Hanged,” Gleaner, 29 Mar. 1961.

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147 V. S. Reid, The Leopard (New York: Viking, 1958).

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149 The University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica, West Indies Collection, Papers of Vic Reid, VRC 1-1-4, “Statement of Plans,” ca. June–July 1956.

150 Interview, Mona, Kingston, 1 July 2016.

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