## Kenyan Nationalism

Waruhiu Itote (1922-1993), also known as General China, is well known particularly because of his involvement in the post-World War II Mau Mau uprising in British Kenya. Comprehensive understanding of the intentions and deplorable acts committed by both the Mau Mau rebels and the British Colonial forces remains a highly contentious issue to this day.[^1] The purpose of this analysis is not to explore the conditions of this engagement, but rather, to focus on the testimony of one man, Waruhiu Itote (1922-1993) and his experience prior to the organizing of the Mau Mau rebels and the fight for Kenyan independence.

Itote opens his articulate autobiographical accounts, "The first time I ever though of myself as Kenyan was in 1943, in the Kalewa trenches on the Burma front."[^2] His reflection serves as a useful case study for understanding the relationship between nationalism as an ideological phenomenon, and the modern day nation-state. The Mau Mau movement, is a particularly poignant modern example of intense, subversive jingoism.[^3] That Itote would go on to serve a prominent roll in the rebellion that played a role in steering Kenya toward declaring its national independence, emphasizes the salience of the peripheral effects emerging from the subject of this analysis: the circumstances of Itote's development of a national identity. By unpacking Itote's autobiographical account, this analysis will seek to dialogue with the perennial question within academic comparative politics—does the modern nation-state give rise to nationalism? Or does nationalism give rise to the modern nation-state?

As a preliminary note, we should first attempt to operationalize the two opposing cause and effect sequences that would correlate with one theoretical conclusion versus the other. This should serve to clarify the conceptual connections of interest. On one hand, in order to exhibit how nationalism may precede the formation of a nation-state (particularly at its inception), one would need to produce instances of national consciousness and solidarity leading to the pursuit and structural adoption of institutions representative of the modern nation-state. On the other hand, in order to demonstrate how the nation-state may precede nationalism, on would need to produce instances of national consciousness arising from the pre-existence of structures associated with the modern nation state. This analysis will seek to demonstrate examples of the latter (the nation-state preceding nationalism) through the mechanisms with which Waruhiu Itote recounts developing a national, Kenyan consciousness in his autobiography. As Colonial Africa serves as a unique case study, this analysis in no way seeks to unequivocally adopt the one hypothesis and disavow the other, but rather to use a unique, political environment to develop some theoretical conclusions regarding the way the presence and institutions of the modern nation-state, as in colonial Africa, aided in the development of national consciousness, and therefore, preceded expressions of Kenyan nationalism. Most significant to the development of Itote's national consciousness is his service within and alongside the British military, through his very explicit account about becoming he is aware he is "Kenyan" (as opposed to his local tribal identity) there are two particular factors necessary: the presence of national institutions and bureaucratic forces imported through British colonialism, and the threatening presence of other modern nation states which require a commensurate institutional response to undermine the perceived domination whether it is exterior or interior.

As alluded to, Itote's time serving in the military is where we uncover the primary modes in which his national consciousness was catalyzed due to the bureaucratic presence of modern nation-state: I had learnt much, too, about military organization. I was now familiar with the procedure and conduct of pre-battle meetings. I realized the importance of establishing a Headquarters in every camp as a centre for communications, reports, discipline and control. Information, not only about the enemy, but also about your own forces and their positions, is crucially important in war, especially in guerilla fighting.[^4]

We cannot divorce the modern nation-state from its structural capacities. As Anthony Giddens writes, "A 'nation,' [...] only exists when a state has a unified administrative reach over the territory over which its sovereignty is claimed."[^5] That is, what may begin first as primarily ad hoc, non-ideological structural advancements which also connect peoples across existing spheres, can evolve into nationalistic sentiments by laying the material groundwork for ideological solidarity that may not have had a reason to exist otherwise. The development of substantial, institutional capacities can enable a person to identify themself as capable of co-determining their well-being with someone whom they previously would not have considered themself materially entangled.

Later when speaking with an Indian family while serving with the British military in Kolkata (then Calcutta), Itote relates that he is encouraged to pursue independence: "If you remember, you were colonized in the first place because you had no education and no weapons to match the Europeans. Now some of you have got education, and some of you know how to use European weapons and can get them if necessary—is there anything else you have to wait for?"[^6]

Itote reports that the local friendships created in Kolkata inspired him to bring indepence to his people: My new friends took a great interest in me, and often talked about the things we servicement could do for ourselves once we were back in our home countries. Co-operatives were important, they told me, for a hundred ex-servicemen with gratuities could get rich much faster than one man alone, struggling against large organizations. Unity and trust seemed to my Indian friends to be the most important elements in any kind of social or political activity [...].[^7]

Prior to, for example, technological advancements or institutional expansion, the groundwork for a persons capacity to experience themself as knitted to others extends only to the edge of where they may discern the end of the particular political economy of which they are a part. In this specific instance, the perceived efficacy of the military bureaucracy, and public education play an important part in the formation of his identity. Through institutional expansion, the capacity for national solidarity is enhanced by the *inter*-connection enabled by the bureaucratic system.[^8] (The development of a national identity, such as in Itote's case, reaches it climax at the point when *inter*-connection transmutes into *intra*-connection.) The institutions of the colonizing nation-state enabled previously disassociated groups with tribal identities (or otherwise), to develop the capacity for the national identity necessary to repel the oppressive, colonizing nation-state. This is not the cultural, homogenizing capacity of industrial society which Gellner proposes, nor the groupism, which Brubaker rebuffs.[^9] Rather, the presence of a national "other," requires the development of a national "self;" which does not necessarily require cultural or groupist homogenization of the self, but simply the unified agency necessary to self-determine and throw off the threatening other.[^10] While all of the institutional advancements shape Kenyan national identity commensurate to the way the institutions have been shaped by British national identity, this potentially cyclical process points us toward the next example of the priority of the nation-state over the formation of national identity.

Part and parcel to Itote's experiential development of an national conscious is the corresponding presence of the threatening "other." In this case, the "others" are modern nation-states engaged in both exterior aggression (e.g. German or Italian conquering forces) and the interior domination of British colonial rule. This is evident through his conversations with other British soldiers while serving in Burma. A British soldier who he has become friends with engages him with a question about what Itote is fighting for, because the soldier knows he is fighting for his own country—England. At first, Itote is confused by the notion of a national identity or pride, and the British soldier answers his own question: "Naturally, we're all fighting to protect not only our own countries but the whole world against Fascism and dictatorship; we know that. But I can't see why you African's should fight to protect the Empire instead of fighting to free yourselves."[^11] While the soldier sees his battle against Axis imperialism as ideological, Itote is more concerned with sovereignty and what is in the best interest of his people: "[...] we had been told our country was threatened with invasion by the Germans and Italians, whom we could only imagine to be the worst monsters on earth."[^12]

Beissenger accurately points us toward the relationship between this type of threat and the development of a national conscious which is perceived by actors as necessary to defend their immediate interests and in so doing the best interests with those "local" people with whom they have solidarity: "Those challenging a given national order have at times resorted to violence as a way of disrupting and undermining authority or intimidating those associated with or protected by authority."[^13] While Beissenger's study here is directed toward understanding the use of violence by nationalist agendas to preserve state stability, it contours directly with the development of nationalism and national consciousness as evinced in Itote's story.[^14] Through his time serving within the British military institution, he recognizes that a national identity is necessary to unifying a consituency to properly buttress the capacities of a modern nation-state which could protect local, group interests against the domination of outside nation-states. Devoid of the threatening presence of the "other" nation-state (whether the domination is interior or exterior), the Kenyan nation-state may not have been necessary to preserve the perceived soverignty and interests of the local people and tribes that would come to identify as Kenyans. The climax of Itote's recollection follows the development we see in both these instances from the presence of the nation-state: "Perhaps most important, I had become conscious of mysef as a Kenya African, one among millions whose destinies were still in the hands of foreigners, yet also one who could see the need and the possibility of changing that situation."[^15]

## Conclusion

In conclusion, it would be helpful to offer a provisional definition of nationalism and follow it up with products of this analysis concerning the influence of the nation-state on its development. Nationalism is an emergent ideological system, understood most accurately within the context of the unique conceptual mechanisms which enable its function. From a broad standpoint, humans, first, have a unique capacity for solidarity with others whom they believe co-determine the well-being of a whole for which both oneself and another are a part.[^16] The "well-being of the whole," in this way, becomes implicated in the well-being of each of its constituent parts. This capacity for solidarity, in its most base form, is both natural and should be understood as value-neutral.[^17]

Following from this basic predisposition, nationalism then manifests itself, when this solidarity is exhibited on behalf of the nation-state as the whole and the other citizens who similarly populate that whole.[^18] This is not to say that ideas or theories as to "what will be best for the whole" will always look alike to those citizens inside.[^19] However, it is to say that nationalism begins from the sentiment that "what is good for the whole, is good for its corresponding parts."[^20] This is the step we see Itote take because of the presence of national bureaucratic structures that enable him to envision this type of expanded solidarity, and the threatening presence of other nation-states that require the resources of a nation-state to defend one's own interests. Without the presence of the modern colonial nation-state, and Itote's involvement in the war of imperial nations, it is unclear whether the appeal of a national identity and independence would have ever developed. The final conceptual step—which we later see developing within Africa, in the same modalities with which it spread throughout the Western world—reifies nationalism into the territory of a more familiar patriotic or even jingoistic pride (with which we are more familiar in its usage): the conclusion that one's superiority over others (in this case, we are refering to state agents) also ensures the superior agent's potential for improving general well-being of its parts. Rather than pointing us away from the conclusions here, this final conceptual step in fact serves to highlight the insidious reality of the presence of the nation-state, because of its capacity—as we see in Itote—to inflame nationalism through the constant perceived threat of a more powerful outside agent, and catalyze the underlying competitive force vivifying the modern nation-state.

[^1]: William H. Worger, Nancy L. Clark, and Edward A. Alpers, “Africa and the West: From Colonialism to Independence, 1875 to the Present,” (2010), 115ff: "Mau Mau is arguably the most highly contended political movement in the history of modern Africa. So hotly disputed are its meaning and heritage among Kenyans and historians that there has never been a single monument erected in commemoration of the movement in Kenya. So although its intimate connection to the history of anticolonial liberation and consequently, nationalism in Kenya is evident, just how that relationship should be interpreted remains unresolved, especially at the level of national politics."

[^2]: Worger, Clark, and Alpers, (2010), 75

[^3]: Worger, Clark, and Alpers, (2010), 120: Wambui Otieno, a prominent Kenyan activist and politician relates this in her memoir *Mau Mau's Daughter: A Life History*: "I took Mbatuni voluntarily and felt more commitment to Mau Mau thereafter, convinced it was the only way Kenya could be free. The oath made believers keep secrets. Above all, it brought unity to Mau Mau's members. Through certain signs and modes of greeting, we were able to identify one another. We also had a code of regulations that we adhered to. I took nine oaths altogether during my time as a Mau Mau."

[^4]: Worger, Clark, and Alpers, (2010), 79

[^5]: John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, eds., *Nationalism* (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 34. While Gidden's analysis is helpful, it is worth noting that his conclusions become obscured in the case here of the development of national identity within colonies, where the administrative capacities of the nation-state are imported to a territory where that which claims sovereignty is not native to the territory itself. As a result, the native populations have an image of the institutional forms of nation-state governance even though the sovereign power has no apparent claim to its territory.

[^6]: Worger, Clark, and Alpers, (2010), 78

[^7]: Worger, Clark, and Alpers, (2010), 79; Additionally, it is hard to underestimate the influence of the Indian example on their eastern African counterparts in rejecting British colonialism. The commensurate nature of the Indian development of national consciousness further exemplifies the role of rejecting the threatening other in achieving the necessary national solidarity.

[^8]: Hutchinson and Smith, (1995), 19: Stalin writes, "A nation is formed only as the result of lengthy and systematic intercourse, as a result of people living together generation after generation. [...] But this is not all. Common territory does not by itself create a nation. This requires, in addition, an internal economic bond to weld the various parts of the nation into a single whole."

[^9]: Rogers Brubaker, “Myths and Misconceptions in the Study of Nationalism,” in John A. Hall, ed., *The State of the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 294.

[^10]: Brubaker, “Myths and Misconceptions in the Study of Nationalism.”, 298: "'Groupness' and 'boundedness' must thus be taken as *variable*, as *emergent properties* of particular structural or conjunctural settings; they cannot properly be taken as given or axiomatic;" Cf. Hutchinson and Smith, (1995), 15f: "Like Weber, [Connor] defines the nation as a community of descent, but distinguishes it from ethnic communities by its degree of self-consciousness; whereasan ethnic group may be other-defined, a nation must be self-defined;" 25: Weber concludes, "And one must be clearly aware of the fact that sentiments of solidarity, very heterogeneous in both their nature and their origin, are comprised within national sentiments."

[^11]: Worger, Clark, and Alpers, (2010), 76

[^12]: Worger, Clark, and Alpers, (2010), 78

[^13]: Mark R. Beissinger, *Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 273.

[^14]: Beissinger, (2002), 273: Beissenger continues: "But nationalist violence is not only a way of contesting domination. It is also a way of institutionalizing domination. Those threated by a potential reconfiguration of authority have at times utilized violence as a means for asserting and upholding group dominance. Indeed, for some types of nationalist violence it is often difficult to discern whether violence was initiated by those seeking to contest an existing order or to uphold it, given the conflicting claims about culpability propagated by the adversaries and the interactive chains of events that set violence in motion." Although he is particularly interested in the dynamics of nationalism within the Soviet state, his insights here also help to explicate the dynamics that can produce national consciousness in colonial Africa as a response to threats, and then undergird the process in which these types of nationalism are reified by the developing state institutions as a new form of domination.

[^15]: Worger, Clark, and Alpers, (2010), 81

[^16]: Brubaker, “Myths and Misconceptions in the Study of Nationalism.”, 279: "On a more philosophical level, we arrive here at the inescapable *antinomies of national self-determination*. Self-determination presupposes the prior determination of the unit—the national self—that is to enjoy the right of self-determination. But the identification and boundaries of this self cannot themselves be self-determined: they must be determined by others. Just as the boundaries of the demos that is presupposed by democratic institutions cannot themselves be democratically determined, so too the boundaries of the national self that is presupposed by national selfdetermination cannot themselves be self-determined." This is consonant with what is explored here, and emphasizes, in pre-modern instances, how the relationship between the state and its constituency can be obfuscated by conflating the self-determination of the state with the originating co-determinative capacity that exists in individuals which gives rise to the group and eventually the self-determining state. Only after the structures and institutions of the nation-state, imported into colonial Africa in the case of Itote, give the appearance of the capacity for nationalistic self-determination does he become aware of this modern capacity of state arrangement; cf. Hutchinson and Smith, (1995), 18: "A great aggregation of men, with a healthy spirit and warmth of heart, creates a moral conscience which is called a nation. When this moral conscience proves its strength by sacrifices that demand abdication of the individual for the benefit of the community, it is legitimate, and it has a right to exist."

[^17]: Brubaker, “Myths and Misconceptions in the Study of Nationalism.”, 278: "Nationalism, then, should not be conceived as essentially or even as primarily state-seking. Nor, as Gellner emphasised, should it be understood as nation-based, that is as arising from the demands of nations, understood as real, substantial, bounded social entities."

[^18]: Hutchinson and Smith, (1995), 22: Weber begins from the same general sentiment, "In the sense of those using the term at a given time, the concept undoubtedly means, above all, that only may exact from certain gropus of men a specific sentiment of solidarity in the face of other groups. [...] Yet, there is no agrement on how these groups should be delimited or about what concerted action should result from such solidarity."

[^19]: Brubaker, “Myths and Misconceptions in the Study of Nationalism.”, 274: "The principle of nationality asserts that state and nation should be congruent; it thereby provides a powerful lever for evaluating, and redrawing, state boundaries, for legitimating, or delegitimating political frontiers according to a kind of 'correspondance theory' of justice." Justice, for example, can be perceived in a variety of ways by different national groups be it economic, territorial or otherwise.

[^20]: Hutchinson and Smith, (1995), 21: Weber's account enhances the generality of this statement with more precise examples: "In addition to the direct and material imperialist interests, discussed above, there are partly indiret and material and partly idological interests of strate that are in various ways intellectually privileged within a polity and, indeed, privileged by its very existence.