00:00 Caroline Elkin, a Pulitzer prize winning writer and professor at Harvard University, gave special evidence at the Mao Mao trial, which revealed the violent and oppressive nature of British colonial rule in Kenya during the 1950s.

04:51 During the post-World War II period, British colonial rule in Kenya intensified, with Africans experiencing worsening conditions and economic exploitation, leading to a violent period of colonial occupation known as the second colonial occupation, and Kenya was chosen as a center of British concerns due to the decision to use settlers for land productivity and the manipulation of monetary policy in the sterling zone.

09:03 During the Mau Mau uprising, the British detained nearly the entire Kikuyu population of 1.5 million in detention camps and emergency villages, where they subjected them to horrific forms of torture and violence.

13:25 The British detention camp system during the Mau Mau uprising was systematized violence aimed at getting Kikuyu people to confess their oath, punish them, extract information, and maintain a normative frame of mistreatment towards natives.

17:19 The author's book about the Mau Mau uprising received scathing criticism, with some questioning the lack of documents and evidence, despite the extensive oral history and scaffolding of documents that supported the argument.

21:16 The National Archives in Kenya were missing numerous documents related to the Mau Mau uprising, including individual files on detainees, which made it difficult to provide evidence for the author's book; however, a legal case filed in 2009 brought about a change in the availability of documents.

25:34 A legal case filed in 2009 led to the discovery of 300 boxes of previously undisclosed files related to colonial violence in 37 colonies, which were held in the bowels of a handscope park in Northumberland.

29:55 The files discovered in Kenya show evidence of systematic destruction and removal of documents prior to decolonization, with an estimated three and a half tons of documents destroyed and an emergency destruction plan in place.

34:24 The destruction of documents by the British colonial government was not unique to Kenya, as they also destroyed documents in Malaya, Cyprus, and other places, becoming more efficient at it over time.

38:44 The case involved a test case with five claimants, and ultimately resulted in a settlement of 20 million pounds, an official monument, and an offer of sincere regret from the British government.

43:04 The British government admitted to the torture and destruction of documents in the Mau Mau case, but argued that they couldn't have a fair trial due to the actions of renegade officers in Kenya.