1945–1963: (Kenya’s Three-Stage Decolonization — Emergent Crisis 1945–1952, the Mau Mau Period 1952–1956 Forcing Britain to Reconsider the Settler Position, …

1945–1963: (Kenya’s Three-Stage Decolonization — Emergent Crisis 1945–1952, the Mau Mau Period 1952–1956 Forcing Britain to Reconsider the Settler Position, and Reconstruction Through the Late 1950s Culminating in the Dismantling of the Settler Polity and Independence): Most of French and British tropical Africa became independent with a minimum of actual violence, but Kenya was the exception where mounting social problems had created an incendiary political climate by the early 1950s. Kenya’s decolonization may be seen in three stages: the period from approximately 1945 to 1952 was one of emergent crisis leading to the declaration of a state of emergency; the main period of Mau Mau violence from 1952 to 1956, which while the rebellion was crushed forced Britain to reconsider its position and that of the settlers; and from the mid-1950s through the early 1960s — including the lifting of the state of emergency in 1959 — Kenya experienced reconstruction and the dismantling of the settler polity, a process culminating in the granting of independence. The Mau Mau uprising, whatever its ultimate military failure, accomplished what decades of petitioning had not — it forced the British to recognize that the settler state was unsustainable, that the violence born of dispossession could not be permanently suppressed, and that the costs of maintaining white privilege would eventually exceed the benefits.