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This is the first study of constitution making during a critical decade of British rule in Kenya to be based on a thorough examination of archival sources. Such sources include secret police and intelligence reports, records of the planning and negotiations leading to the imposition of the three constitutions, and British cabinet records. These allow for a more complete appreciation of the forces that produced the specific constitutional dispensations. For example, the book provides the fullest and most authoritative account of the first Lancaster House conference of 1960. The account indicates that the constitution that emerged, as with the negotiations of 1954 and 1957, was not the result of inter-racial bargaining. Rather, each constitution was imposed by Britain after acceptance by some political groups, though not all. Such partial acceptance proved fatal to the constitutions of the 1950s. The book illustrates this reality as well as highlighting the importance of African agency in the overthrow of the Lyttleton and Lennox-Boyd constitutions and in the emergence of the very different constitutional order that resulted from the Lancaster House conference. Britain and Kenya’s Constitutions, 1950-1960 is an important resource for scholars in African studies as well as those researching the history of British decolonization in Africa.
