'Imperial Reckoning' and 'Histories of the Hanged': White Man's Bungle
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/books/review/30BERGNER.html?pagewanted=all&position=
By DANIEL BERGNER
Published: January 30, 2005
IN a war-ravaged town in Sierra Leone a few years ago, I listened as
five men debated the idea of recolonization, which many of their
countrymen favored. They sat in a derelict shed, the office of a
building contractor who'd lost all his equipment to rampaging soldiers.
He was lucky to be alive and unmutilated; factions in the civil war had
cut off the hands of civilians, then let them live as the ultimate
message of terror. Amid the ruin of their nation, only one of the five
men objected to the idea. ''We had segregation, right over there,'' he
said, pointing toward the desolate grounds of a secondary school, his
voice rising in outrage. ''We couldn't go to that school!'' To which
the contractor, white-haired and old enough to have spent his childhood
under British rule, said, ''At least there was school for Africans.''
IMPERIAL RECKONING
The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya.
By Caroline Elkins.
Illustrated. 475 pp. Henry Holt & Company. $27.50.
HISTORIES OF THE HANGED
The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire.
By David Anderson.
Illustrated. 406 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $25.95.
Kenya
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