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Short abstract:

In this more-than-human account of colonial warfare, we draw upon posthumanism and animal studies to account for an alliance of sorts among Gĩkũyũ insurgents, the terrain of Royal Aberdare National Park, and the park’s wildlife population during the Mau Mau Uprising in colonial Kenya.

Long abstract:

Conceptions of terrain have been influenced by posthuman studies, recasting nonhumans, animate and not, as actors that are vital to outcomes. This approach has influenced the literature on military insurgencies, including our study of the Mau Mau Uprising in colonial Kenya. The fighting took place mainly between 1952 and 1956 in the challenging terrain of two mountainous areas of Central Kenya, which prior to the war had been designated as national parks: Royal Aberdare National Park and Mt. Kenya National Park. Focusing on the former, we recount relations between the Gikũyũ insurgents and the wildlife that shared the park space during the war. Characterize this forced co-habitation, we draw connections between discourse on representations of Gĩkũyũ fighters and the posthumanist perspectives on animal studies. Thousands of fighters in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, as they were formally known, depended on the park’s terrain for protection and as a base of operations, including its steep mountains, continuous cloud cover, dense tree canopy and undergrowth, icy rivers and streams, and constantly cold and wet conditions. The park’s wildlife presented a constant concern, including its water buffalo, rhinoceros, elephants and many more. The Royal Aberdare National Park was ostensibly created to protect these nonhuman animals, but the war in the forest brought British aerial bombing campaigns and foot patrols, which endangered its wildlife as well as the Gĩkũyũ insurgents. Developing a truce of sorts among them, the more-than-human partnerships of terrain, insurgency, and wildlife invites an expanded conception of allied forces.