Julius Kiano Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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Dr. Kiano, welcome to Berkeley.
Thank you very much.
You were educated here. Tell us a little about that. What degree did you get? What did you major in?
I was very fortunate to be admitted to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 1949 after having done two post-secondary education programs at Makerere College in Uganda. So by 1952, I was able to receive my degree in economics from Antioch, where I showed a lot of interest in the study of cooperative movements and so on. Then I got a University Fellowship from Stanford University, where I did my Masters degree, mainly in Public Administration. It was at that time that I learned that there were programs and studies of East Asian countries, and also there were some studies going on on Africa. And I thought of coming here and was able to work under the professors dealing with those subjects, like Dr. Robert Scalapino, who knew quite a lot about China and Japan and Southeast Asia, and there was also Mr. Julian Friedman (he's no longer here), who was beginning to show a lot of interest in Africa. So I came to this university because I was very interested in comparative studies on what was going on in different parts of Asia and Africa, in context with their intention to liberate themselves from colonial rule.
And you were here at a time when this very process was going on in your own country.
Very much so, because, in the first place, political protest has been
going on Kenya for many years. I mean, from the early '20s. As I was finishing
high school in 1945, that was the end of the Second World War and ex-soldiers
were returning home saying, "Yes, we have been fighting for the freedom of
England, or the United States, or France, against the Germans, Hitler, fascism.
But what about colonialism at home?" So, those ex-soldiers were talking a lot
about the need for the freedom of the other countries also. Then soon after our
great leader, Kenyatta, came from England and he revived, very tremendously,
the matter of freedom for Africans. So, by the time I came to the United
States, in 1948. I was very much aware of the political situation in my country
and of the need to participate in the liberation of my country.
So to come to Berkeley to study nationalism wasn't really just theoretical studies. It was also looking at processes throughout the world that had meaning for your own country and what was about to happen in it.
It was far, far from theoretical analysis. I could see what had happened in India, what was happening in Indonesia, what was happening in Dien Bien Phu (you remember that very tragic situation, as a part of the liberation of Indochina at that time). So I knew things would also be happening in Africa and, as you recall, in 1951 Dr. Kwame Nkrumah became the leader of government business in Ghana. Ghana later became the first African country to be independent from the British rule in 1956, the very year I got my Ph.D. So I was trying to relate my studies as much as I could with what was going on in Africa, and what was likely to go on in Africa.
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