Winning Kenya's Independence

When Queen Victoria's 60 glorious years of reign over the empire 'where the sun never set' came to its end in 1901 the Great British Empire was, to quote Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, 'the greatest power in the world' with India the jewel in the imperial crown. Yet the British Empire was growing still and Kenya was a new protectorate in equatorial East Africa.

40 years on the world was at war for the second time in the 20th century at the end of which, to quote historian A.J.P. Taylor, 'the British did not relinquish their empire by accident. They ceased to believe in it'. Between 1946 and 1963 Kenya transformed from colony to become a republic. Winning Kenya's Independence provides a balanced account of events with the people at the centre of the narrative.

In 1989 Eliud Waweru, the author's Kikuyu driver in Kenya, shared experiences and copies of Daily Nation. The newspaper contained an article about veteran Mau Mau leader Mwariama and his execution of a British soldier. It was Eliud who suggested that an objective and balanced account of the post-war years leading to Kenya's independence had yet to be written. Winning Kenya's Independence is an attempt to fill the gap he saw.