A Tapestry of African Histories enriches our understanding of the transnational history of Africa, covering biographical studies, social and economic history, pre-colonial history, colonial and postcolonial development, and nationalist and intellectual history with a longue durée. The collection has been thoroughly researched by experienced contributors whose careers were influenced by Robert Maxon's scholarship – the historian-Africanist to whom this book is dedicated for his significant role in the development of history as an academic field of study in Kenya and East Africa more broadly. Beyond Maxon, it is an addition to the revisionist scholarship on Africa reclaiming local voices in modern state formation and development.
The book recognizes Maxon's commitment to the career of his Kenyan colleagues and their scholarship. Three of the chapters in the book are written by Maxon himself. The first chapter is written by another doyen of Kenyan history, John M. Lonsdale, who argued for historical plurality in the writing of Kenyan history to help readers think for themselves. Chapter 2 chronicles Maxon's career history and how he began to interface with Kenya and its people. Chapter 3 showcases Maxon's biographical approach to Kenya's national history. Here, he argues for the study of silent voices in Kenyan history. In particular, he places focuses on Kenyan nationalist, Oginga Odinga, who he claims has not been accorded his proper place in Kenyan historiography for his heroism and contribution to decolonisation, unlike his nationalist counterpart, Jomo Kenyatta.
In Chapter 4, Maxon uses archival records to assert Daniel arap Moi's agency in Kenyan nationalist history. Moi, he argues, by dint of hard work and resilience, achieved career progression and became influential in both colonial and anti-colonial politics with a wide support base that defied ethnic boundaries. Through the same biographical approach, Chapter 5 explores the life of a prominent colonial administrator in Kenya, John Dawson Ainsworth, whom the British colonial government considered to be ‘pro-native’ during his tenure as the first Chief Native Commissioner. Okia Opolot argues that Ainsworth's legacy is contradictory. While he encouraged African production, his policies enabled Europeans to cheaply mobilise African labour to the benefit of the settlers’ own production. Chapter 6 explores the first political assassination in Kenya, the February 1965 killing of Pio Gama Pinto, a foremost Kenyan anti-imperial activist – and its implications for postcolonial politics and democracy. Chapter 7 analyses the politics of memory and how it complicates community, belonging and identity politics in Eastlands, Nairobi.
Chapter 8 examines the history of plagues in Samburuland and how public health disasters such as cholera and smallpox ravaged the pastoralists and herders whose everyday encounter with animals and microorganisms led to widespread diseases in the 19th century. It argues that such public health disasters made the people vulnerable to British colonial rule at the turn of the century.
Three chapters examine developments in Malawi and Sudan. Chapter 9 unpacks the legacy of British colonial rule in Sudan, with a focus on the social development policy and post-Second World War efforts of the British towards alleviating the suffering and addressing the needs of colonised subjects through the Gezira and Zande schemes, and the implications of these schemes for decolonisation and postcolonial inter-ethnic rivalries in Sudan. Similarly, Chapter 10 examines the challenge of British colonial development in Kenyan Nyasaland. It posits that the boom in cotton production in Nyasaland during the Great Depression was an illusion that served the imagination of European administrators but did not reflect the economic interests of local people.
In Chapter 11, Gift W. Kariya explores the theme of community development in the form of efforts by local actors and cooperative societies in the development of postcolonial Malawi. Paul C. Banda's chapter investigates human rights abuses in colonial and postcolonial Malawi, particularly during the Cold War, focusing on the conduct of the police force.
Chapters 13 and 14 examine constitutional development and the challenge of nation-building in postcolonial Kenya. Chapter 14 is co-authored by Maxon and Nicholas Githuku. Here, they explore the challenge of nation-building and the range of efforts geared toward constitutional reforms and political stability in postcolonial Kenya. They argue that the state's ‘Building Bridges Initiative’, a political effort aimed at stability, was a ‘whitewash’ that only served elite interests and not the common people of Kenya (293). The merit of the chapter lies in the authors’ ability to strike connections between colonial and postcolonial politics, using examples such as colonial violence in the 1950s, electoral violence in 1993 and the 2017 election crisis involving President Uhuru Kenyatta and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga. Just as the colonial politics of the 1950s reinforced ethnic violence, the crisis involving Uhuru and Odinga exacerbated political tension among their supporters until the two politicians embraced a mutual olive branch in 2019. The last chapter in the book discusses the influence of digital technologies in the 21st century and the ways in which they have exacerbated financial crimes, impunity and corruption in the postcolonial Kenyan bureaucracy.
Overall, contributions from Northern, Western and Central Africa would have enriched the wider geopolitics targeted by this edited collection. This is, however, not a deficit per se, given that the editor made it clear that the collection is principally focused on Kenya. Therefore, historians, students and teachers of African history, both colonial and postcolonial, will find this edited collection useful for both teaching and further research.
