Caroline Elkins

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Caroline Elkins (born 1969) is an associate professor of History at Harvard University. She studies the colonial encounter in Africa during the twentieth century. In 2006, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for her book on British treatment of the Kikuyu in Kenya, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya.She is currently Policy Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government in the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy, Harvard University, U.S..

Contents

[edit] Biography

Caroline Elkins graduated, summa cum laude, with a major in History from Princeton University. She received her Master's and Doctoral degrees in History from Harvard. She teaches courses on modern Africa, protest in East Africa, human rights in Africa, and British colonial violence in the 20th century.

[edit] Criticism of Elkins' work

Elkins' work was criticized by historian Lawrence James in The Sunday Times as being a one-sided account of the Mau Mau Uprising. In an article in The Guardian, James, in turn, was criticized for "whitewashing the history of the British empire".[1]

Nicholas Best, acknowledging that "there can be no excuse for what happened" in Kenya, questioned Elkins' detention and casualty figures as "ludicrous" and accused Elkins of being selective in her sources.[2]

Richard Dowden wrote a critical review of Elkins' book in The Guardian.[3] James Mitchell, in a highly critical review of the book, said 'I shudder for those of her students who expect academic rigour: Elkins doesn't let facts stand in the way of a good rant.'[4]

David Elstein has also noted severe shortcomings in Elkins' methodology and conclusions. Elstein contends that her casualty figures are derived from an idiosyncratic reading of census figures and a tendentious interpretation of the fortified village scheme.

The BBC documentary Kenya: White Terror was based on Elkins'controversial research into the Mau Mau. It aired on Sunday 17 November 2002 on BBC Two at 1915 GMT and subsequently on BBC World. As a result of complaints made against this documentary, Ofcom (the British broadcasting watchdog) ruled that the programme had been partially unfair to Terrence Gavaghan, whom Elkins accuses of brutality.

Elkins' Harvard colleague Niall Ferguson, who praised Elkins for her research which he described as "painstaking", nevertheless described her book as a "sensationalist" account of the rebellion.[5]

In 2007, the demographer John Blacker writing in African Affairs demonstrated in detail that Elkins' estimates of casualties were grossly over estimated.[6]

[edit] Works

[edit] External links

[edit] References

Persondata
NAME Elkins, Caroline
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Pulitzer prize winner and professor of History who studies colonial encounter in Africa during the twentieth century.
DATE OF BIRTH 1969
PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
Languages