The psychology of rebellion: Colonial medical responses to dissent in British East Afrcica

Journal of African History

Volumn 47, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 241-258

  Mahone, Sloan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Colonial; East Africa; Kenya; Nationalism; Resistance

Indexed keywords

COLONIALISM; NATIONALISM; PSYCHOLOGY;

AFRICA; EAST AFRICA; KENYA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA;

EID: 33746160634     PISSN: 00218537     EISSN: 14695138     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0021853706001769     Document Type: Article

References (79)

1. Kenya National Archives (KNA), DC/MKS/10B/8/1, K. R. Dundas to Provincial Commissioner, 24 Dec. 1911.
2. KNA, DC/MKS/10B/8/1, K. R. Dundas.
3. Ibid.
4. Megan Vaughan, 'Idioms of madness: Zomba Lunatic Asylum, Nyasaland, in the colonial period', Journal of Southern African Studies, 9 (1983), 218-38.
5. See also her chapter, 'The madman and the medicine men: Colonial psychiatry and the theory of deculturation', in Curing their Ills (Stanford, 1991), 100-28.
6. This list is not exhaustive, but examples include: Jonathan Sadowsky, Imperial Bedlam: Institutions of Madness in Colonial Southwest Nigeria (Berkeley, 1999)
7. Leland Bell, Mental and Social Disorder in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of Sierra Leone, 1787-1990 (Waltham, MA, 1991)
8. Jock McCulloch, Colonial Psychiatry and 'the African Mind' (Cambridge, 1995)
9. Lynette Jackson, 'The place of psychiatry in colonial and early postcolonial Zimbabwe', International Journal of Mental Health, 28 (1999), 38-71
10. Richard Keller, 'Madness and colonization: Psychiatry in the British and French Empires, 1800-1962', Journal of Social History, 35 (2001), 295-326.
11. For a detailed discussion of the defining and naming of prophets and prophet-types, see the Introduction to David Anderson and Douglas Johnson (eds.), Revealing Prophets: Prophecy in East African History (London, 1995), 1-26.
12. The most extensive work on Dim ya Msambwa is Audrey Wipper, Rural Rebels: A Study of Two Protest Movements in Kenya (London, 1977), which chronicles both the Dim ya Msambwa and the rise of Mumboism.
13. Such ideas paved the way for the government's ultimate expression of 'pathologization' and denial as seen in its official response to Mau Mau; the Mau Mau uprising remains outside the scope of this article, however.
14. Gerhard Lindblom, The Akamba (Uppsala, 1920), 238.
15. Ibid. 239.
16. Charles Walter Neligan, 'Description of Kijesu ceremony among the Akamba, Tiva River, East Africa', Man, 11 (1911), 49.
17. Charles William Hobley, A-Kamba and Other East African Tribes (Cambridge, 1910), 11-12. Hobley also uses the term ki-jesu, and, like Lindblom, speculated as to the term's origin as either the Kamba pronunciation of 'Jesus' (Jesu) or derivative of the Kamba word for 'knife' (kisu) as knives were instrumental in the ceremony to relieve the hysterical symptoms.
18. T. A. J., Book Review, A-Kamba and Other East African Tribes by C. W. Hobley, Man, 11 (1911), 62. Latah was documented primarily among the Malays and was classified as a 'culture-bound' syndrome or in some cases, a syndrome caused by culture-contact.
19. Lindblom, Akamba, 240.
20. KNA, DC/MKS/10B/8/1, K. R. Dundas.
21. Ibid.
22. Matthew Woods, In Spite of Epilepsy; Being a Review of the Lives of Three Great Epileptics,-Julius Caesar, Mohammed, Lord Byron, The Founders Respectively of an Empire, a Religion, and a School of Poetry (New York, 1913)
23. Owsei Temkin, The Falling Sickness: A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology, 2nd edn. (Baltimore, 1971).
24. Two journalistic accounts that cover the relationship between epilepsy and artistic personalities or cross-cultural variations in conceptualizing epilepsy are: Eve LaPlante, Seized: Temporal Lobe Epilepsy as a Medical, Historical, and Artistic Phenomenon (New York, 1993)
25. Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (New York, 1997).
26. John K. Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Doña Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684-1706 (Cambridge, 1998).
27. Marie-Louise Martin, Kimbangu: An African Prophet and his Church (Oxford, 1975)
28. Susan Asch, L'Eglise du Prophète Kimbangu (Paris, 1983).
29. See also Samuel Simbandumwe, A Socio-Religious and Political Analysis of the Judeo-Christian Concept of Prophetism and Modern Bakongo and Zulu African Prophet Movements (Lewiston, NY, 1992).
30. Robert R. Edgar and Hilary Sapire, African Apocalypse: The Story of Nontetha Nkwenkwe, a Twentieth-Century South African Prophet (Johannesburg, 2000). It should be noted that the prophetess Nontetha was institutionalized in an asylum in South Africa's Eastern Cape, although in this case the authors point to her gender as a factor in characterizing her actions as insane.
31. Richard Waller, 'They do the dictating and we must submit', in Anderson and Johnson (eds.), Revealing Prophets, 85.
32. For example, see, Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (New York, 1963), 181.
33. For a discussion and application of this idea, see Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (New York, 1964).
34. Roland Littlewood and Maurice Lipsedge, Aliens and Alienists: Ethnic Minorities and Psychiatry (London, 1997), 202.
35. KNA, DC/MKS/10B/8/1, K. R. Dundas.
36. See also J. Forbes Munro, Colonial Rule and the Kamba (Oxford, 1975)
37. for a brief description of these issues as well as Munro's early review of materials in the Kenya National Archives; J. Forbes Munro, 'Muindi Mbingu the rebel: Political protesT in Ukamba, 1900-1940: the documentation', East Africa Journal, 5 (1968), 27-35.
38. KNA, DC/MKS/10B/8/1, K. R. Dundas.
39. Munro, Colonial Rule, 117.
40. KNA, PC/CP/8/2/4, note to Mr. Traill from R. G. Stone, Machakos, 3 Apr. 1922.
41. KNA, PC/CP/8/2/4, statement of Waita wa Ndunda, 24 Sept. 1922.
42. KNA, PC/CP/8/2/4, statement of Kithuku wa Kibungo, 21 Sept. 1922. Such translated references to 'going mad' are perhaps representative of British anxieties about Kamba collective enthusiasm rather than precise translations.
43. KNA, PC/CP/8/2/4, statement of Ndui wa Matolo, 22 Aug. 1922.
44. KNA, PC/CP/8/2/4, statement of Ndeti wa Kibai, Iveti location, 22 Aug. 1922.
45. KNA, PC/CP/8/2/4, statement of Munyoki wa Mutiambui, 4 Sept. 1922.
46. Cargo cults are known most famously and prolifically for Melanesia. For example, Peter Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of 'Cargo' Cults in Melanesia (New York, 1968)
47. Lamont Lindstrom, Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond (Honolulu, 1993).
48. For a critique of the Cargo cult as a colonial invention, see Martha Kaplan, Neither Cargo Nor Cult: Ritual Politics and the Colonial Imagination in Fiji (Durham, 1995). My thanks go to Josh Bell for this last reference.
49. N. M. Bird, 'Is there danger of a post-war flare-up among New Guinea natives?', Pacific Islands Monthly (Nov. 1945), 69-70. The 'postwar' designation is important as the author asserts that the 'natives' after contact with 'tens of thousands of white soldiers, are more difficult to handle than ever before'. I thank Eben Kirksey for providing me with a copy of this article and for subsequent discussions about the Cargo cult phenomenon.
50. F. E. Williams, The Vailala Madness and the Destruction of Native Ceremonies in the Gulf Division (Port Moresby, 1923).
51. Vaughan, 'Idioms of madness', 218-19.
52. KNA, PC/CP/8/2/4, memo of Acting District Commissioner, Machakos, 17 Oct. 1922.
53. Ibid.
54. John Lonsdale, 'The prayers of Waiyaki: Political uses of the Kikuyu past', in Anderson and Johnson (eds.), Revealing Prophets, 243. My thanks to John Lonsdale for drawing my attention to this particular point.
55. KNA, PC/CP/8/2/4, deportee Ndonye wa Kauti, 21 Oct. 1927. In 1927 Ndonye wa Kauti's case came up for review with some administrators and the local headmen advocating for Ndonye's return to Ukamba, though this was met with some opposition in part due to the presence of anti-government sentiment and activities in neighbouring districts that might be agitated further by the re-emergence of the prophet.
56. KNA, PC/NZA/2/7/97, Provincial Commissioner, Nyanza, to MO in Charge, Mathari, E. R. N. Cooke, 11 June 1946.
57. Dini ya Msambwa had a significant impact on colonial thinking, but it was just one of many social movements that the government felt the need to monitor, at least on some level.
58. African Affairs Annual Report for 1948, Kenya Colony, 2.
59. KNA, PC/NZA/2/7/97, Provincial Commissioner to J. C. Carothers, 11 Dec. 1946.
60. KNA, PC/NZA/2/7/97, letter to B. J. Hobson, 8 May 1947.
61. KNA, PC/NZA/2/7/97, Lunacy Cause No. 30/47, Daniel Wekanda, 1 Apr. 1950.
62. E. J. Foley had served in East Africa previously as the psychiatrist in charge of Dodoma Mental Hospital in Tanganyika.
63. KNA, PC/NZA/2/7/97, letter to Acting Specialist Psychiatrist from District Commissioner, Nyanza, 8 May 1950.
64. One month later Daniel Wekanda was caught by police and returned to Mathari. It is unclear from the records what happened to him after that.
65. KNA, DC/NN/10/1/5, memo regarding Dim ya Msambwa from District Officer, Kavujai, 1949.
66. National Archives, London (NA), CO/822/2017, Kenya Intelligence Service, Deportation Ordinance for Elijah Masinde and nine other Dim ya Msambwa, 1960.
67. KNA, DC/NN/10/1/5, memo from K. L. Hunter to Hon. Member for Law & Order, 7 Dec. 1949.
68. KNA, DC/NN/10/1/5, W. R. B. Pugh, Superintendent of Police, Nyanza, re: Dini ya Msambwa, 15 Mar. 1943.
69. Waller, 'They do the dictating', 84-5.
70. NA, CO 822/809, Dini ya Msambwa, Kenya Intelligence Committee, Oct. 1954.
71. Ibid.
72. KNA, DC/NN/10/1/2, memo from Assistant District Commissioner, ' Mohamedan or Anti-European Movement in North Kavirondo', 25 Sept. 1926.
73. KNA, PC/CP/8/7/3, memo to Commissioner of Police, Nairobi, 21 May 1934.
74. Ibid
75. KNA, PC/CP/8/7/3, H. E. Lambert, 'Watu wa Mungu', 15 June 1942.
76. T. O. Ranger, 'Connexions between "primary resistance" movements and modern mass nationalism in east and central Africa', part I, Journal of African History, 9 (1968), 443.
77. By the 1950s, such psychological approaches were well accepted and opened the way for official reports such as The Psychology of Mau Mau (Nairobi, 1954) authored by Mathari Hospital's former p sychiatrist-in-charge, J. C. Carothers.
78. From the 1930s, this psychiatric literature was published frequently in the Nairobi-based East African Medical Journal, but also found its way into the pages of the British Medical Journal, The Lancet and the Journal of Mental Science.
79. An analysis of the Mau Mau emergency sits outside of the scope of this article; however, on this point see J. C. Carothers, The Psychology of Mau Mau (Nairobi, 1954).