Architecture of denial: Imperial violence, the construction of law and historical knowledge during the mau mau uprising, 1952–1960

In 2013, the UK government settled a class action suit, which alleged that the British Colonial Government had subjected Kenyans to detainment, ill treatment and torture during the 1952–1960 ‘Kenya Emergency’. During the trial proceedings, the efforts of three expert historical witnesses for the prosecution – Caroline Elkins, David Anderson and Huw Bennett – led to the discovery of a cache of over 8,000 historical files from 36 former British colonies. The material contained within these documents suggested not only that Britain was aware of pervasive human rights abuses occurring throughout Kenya during the Emergency, but that the use of such violence was in fact endorsed and systematically regulated at the highest levels of the colonial administration. Drawing on Foucault’s conception of historical archives as ‘systems of discursivity’, and making use of the testimonies of the three experts, this article explores how the British Colonial Administration was able to dominate the discursive space surrounding Kenyan law and Mau Mau identity, allowing it both to justify the implementation of systemic violence throughout the Emergency, and to evade legal responsibility for these abuses at the time, and for decades afterward.