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Paper short abstract:

This paper traces the development of quotidian restrictions and punishments in the Mau Mau conflict, examining how, under the influence of the negotiated relationship between low-level officers and their loyalist counterparts, these everyday control became an indelible part of future state-building.

Paper long abstract:

In the tumultuous years of the Mau Mau emergency, control over the majority of the non-active Kikuyu population was mitigated through the negotiated relationship of regional administrators and their local loyalist counterparts, designing and implementing controls and punishments with the aim to be effectual, applicable and vitally, understood, by the local population. A factor key in justifying their wide use.

As the conflict progressed and minds turned to the future of the colony, these relationships and the controls they oversaw underwent a paralleled evolution, with an increased emphasis on development and state-building, quotidian punitive restrictions and punishments would become part of localised efforts to establish loyalist communities as the legitimate expression of native interest and set up these groups for hierarchical predominance in the peace to come.

In a narrative usually enraptured in accounts of violence, this paper instead argues that vital to understanding the colour and composition of the structures of control which would come to power in Kenya's independence less than a decade later is an appreciation of transformative effect this conspiration of administrators and loyalist had in the formation and direction of everyday punishment and control on localised constituencies, tracing important changes to these restrictions which would have long-term and significant effects on the make-up of Kikuyu society as a whole.