How did British settlers, officials and experts understand the Mau Mau Essay

How did British settlers, officials and experts understand the Mau Mau - Essay Example The movement also managed to unite the rest of the country under the objective of liberating the country from colonial rule. British experts viewed the movement as a collection of people who wanted justice for the atrocities committed by British settlers. It suited British settlers and administrators to brand Mau Mau as a primitive and cruel organization (Barnett 1972, p. 5). They also hid the real objectives of the movement in order to deny the local population justice and equality. This was important for the settlers because it gave them a platform for justifying their brutal repression and approaches towards the Mau Mau. British experts who viewed the Mau Mau as a freedom movement willingly offered legal and political assistance to the leaders of the movement (Durrani 2006, p. 17). They even provided platforms for the education of the leaders of the movement. British settlers strategically condemned the movement and freedom fighters in order deny them justice. Mau Mau was isolated from its historical context by British experts and elitists. These individuals did not consider the freedom movement as an organization that stood up against the atrocities of the settlers. Mau Mau was historically placed as a group of people who took arms to protect their native land against British settlers (Elkins 2006, p. 28). From the moment, settlers began to enter the country, natives organized themselves to counter the invasion. Many studies by British scholars and administrators during the period of the Mau Mau described the freedom movement as a modern nationalist response to the oppression and unfairness of the settler’s domination (Bennett 2013, p. 22). Colonial administrators and settlers considered the movement as an uprising that needed to be stopped vigorously. In response to the Mau Mau insurgency, British settlers and administrators created policies that confined natives to reserves and camps. Natives who lived in