Caroline Elkins
Caroline Elkins is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian known for her groundbreaking work on the history of British colonialism in Kenya, particularly during the Mau-Mau Uprising of the 1950s. Born in 1969 in New Jersey, she pursued her passion for history at Princeton University and later at Harvard, where she delved into the often-overlooked narratives of detention camps established by the British government during this tumultuous period. Elkins's 2005 book, *Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya*, reveals the harsh realities faced by approximately 1.5 million Kenyans, many of whom were subjected to torture and forced labor in these camps.
Her research faced considerable scrutiny and criticism, yet it also gained significant recognition, culminating in her receiving the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2006. Elkins's findings contributed to a landmark legal case in which the British government was held accountable for its abuses, resulting in a settlement and formal apology — a historic moment for colonial reparations. In 2022, she published *Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire*, further exploring themes of historical narrative and the erasure of evidence. Currently, Elkins serves as a professor of history at Harvard University, where she continues to engage with African studies and the legacies of colonialism.
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Subject Terms
Caroline Elkins
Author
- Born: May 30, 1969
- Place of Birth: New Jersey
Contribution: Caroline Elkins is a Pulitzer Prize–winning author and Harvard historian best known for her 2005 book Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya.
Background
Caroline Elkins was born in 1969 and grew up in New Jersey. She attended Ocean Township High School where she played basketball and field hockey. Pursuing her passion for history, Elkins enrolled in Princeton University to study the subject. During her time there, she took a life-changing course on African history with Professor Robert Tignor and decided to complete her senior thesis research in Nairobi, Kenya. She came across several documents about detention camps during the infamous Mau-Mau Uprising—an event that occurred in the 1950s, when Kenya was still a British colony. The information she found was incomplete, but when she tried to research the story further, she could not find a book or article about the camps. She decided that if she ever went to graduate school, she would write her dissertation on the unknown camps.
Elkins graduated from Princeton in 1991 and worked on Wall Street for several years before enrolling in graduate school at Harvard University. Her studies were primarily focused on the history of the women of Kenya, but she continued to pursue the story about the detention camps, hoping to find enough information for her doctoral dissertation. She began with a simple thesis regarding the empire that aligned with the pervading historical view of a benign British Empire; in other words, an empire largely believed to have done good as well as harm. However, a year into her research, a frustrated Elkins came to the conclusion that, in the case of the Mau-Mau Uprising at least, the British Empire could not be construed as benign.
Career
In 1952, a small group of mostly Kikuyu (the majority ethnic group in the region) formed a radical secret society called the Mau-Mau in response to a new wave of British settlers to Kenya who took their land and tried to eradicate Kikuyu customs. The Mau-Mau movement launched a brutal rebellion, murdering, according to Elkins, about thirty-two settlers and a number of their African supporters. In retaliation, Elkins found, the British government instated what they called a “pipeline” of detention camps for men and villages for women and children across the region in which a staggering 1.5 million Kenyans were held and subjected to heinous acts of torture and years of forced labor. Thousands of Kenyans died in the camps; official statistics place the toll at eleven thousand, though Elkins reckons that the number is much higher.
Many of the details of the horrific oppression—meticulously recorded by the British government between 1952 and 1960—were destroyed before decolonization in 1963. Elkins spent ten years tracking down the few government files that existed about the camps, poring over private letters and interviewing hundreds of survivors and former officials. Through her research she discovered that the British had devised not only a chillingly efficient operation for carrying out violence but also a formidable propaganda machine in Britain, that, on one hand, trumpeted the brutality of the Kikuyu “savages” who swore blood oaths to kill whites and, on the other, celebrated the empire’s successful efforts to “civilize” them.
Elkins’s findings were published in the 2005 book Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya. The book, which she completed as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard in 2003, met with both praise and virulent criticism. A number of scholars disputed her research methods, particularly her reliance on oral accounts, and a few critics dismissed her account as total fiction. The idea that the British Empire had committed such atrocities was not only unpopular but also went against years of scholarship. Still, Elkins found a number of supporters, including David Anderson, an Oxford professor who published a similar account of British rule in Kenya called Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of the Empire the same year. In 2006, Elkins was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in the general nonfiction category for her book. In 2010 she was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship for her work.
Impact
Elkins’s book, the contents of which had been so widely disputed, was vindicated by the Pulitzer Prize as well as an unprecedented legal action that grew directly out of her research. In 2009, the Kenya Human Rights Commission in Nairobi selected three survivors of the camps and sued the British government for its abuses. For four years, Elkins, Anderson, and another historian served as expert witnesses in the case. In June 2013, the British government announced that it would pay a $31 million settlement to survivors, was funding a memorial to victims of torture and human rights abuses, and issued an apology for the crimes. It marked the first time the British government issued any apology or reparations for its imperial actions. In September 2015, the British-funded memorial statue was unveiled before thousands of Kenyans at Uhuru Park in Nairobi. In 2022, Elkins published Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire. The critically-acclaimed work discusses Elkins' views on how history is written, particularly how evidence of historical events is destroyed or hidden.
Personal Life
Elkins is a professor of history at Harvard University; she also serves as the chair of the Committee on African Studies. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and two sons.
Bibliography
Howe, Stephen. “Books: Forgotten Shame of Empire.” Rev. of Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya, by Caroline Elkins. Independent (London). Independent.co.uk, 21 Jan. 2005. Web. 21 July 2013.
McDermott-Murphy, Caitlin. "Legacy of Liberal Violence." The Harvard Gazette, 28 Mar. 2022, news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/03/caroline-elkins-new-book-broadens-story-of-british-empire/. Accessed 23 Sept. 2024.
Mehegan, David. “Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya.” Boston Globe. New York Time, 6 Oct. 2006. Web. 21 July 2013.
Ness, John. “The Fight for Freedom.” Newsweek. Newsweek/Daily Beast, 14 Mar. 2005. Web. 21 July 2013.
Powell, Alvin. “Hard Look at Harsh Times.” Harvard Gazette. Harvard University, 18 Mar. 2010. Web. 21 July 2013.
Powell, Alvin. “Reflections on Justice Delayed.” Harvard Gazette. Harvard University, 11 June 2013. Web. 21 July 2013.
Shapiro, Gary. “Three Book Parties on a Cold Winter’s Night.” New York Sun. TWO SL, 20 Jan. 2005. Web. 21 July 2013.
Tomlinson, Brett. “Tiger of the Week: Caroline Elkins ’91.” Princeton Alumni Weekly 12 June 2013. Web. 21 July 2013.