John M. Lonsdale (born 1937) is a British Africanist and historian. He is Emeritus Professor of Modern African History at the Centre of African Studies in the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge. He is a Fellow of Trinity College there.^[1] As a schoolboy, he spent three summer holidays during 1953-1956 in Kenya where his father had just taken a job.^[2] He read history at Cambridge from 1958 through 1964.^[3] In 1956 he started his national service as a subaltern in the King's African Rifles. His first teaching job was in Dar es Salaam in 1964.^[2] Lonsdale studied the modern history of Kenya extensively and won the Outstanding African Studies Award of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom in 2006.^[4]

Professor Lonsdale published many journal articles, books and book chapters including^[1][5]

• A political history of Nyanza, 1883-1945, PhD thesis University of Cambridge 1964^[6]
• Some Origins of Nationalism in East Africa, The Journal of African History 9 (1968), 119 - 146, Cambridge University Press^[7]
• Coping with the Contradictions: the Development of the Colonial State in Kenya, 1895-1914 by Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, The Journal of African History 20 (1979), 487-505
• The growth and transformation of the colonial state in Kenya, 1929-52, University of Nairobi, Dept. of History, [1980], Series: Staff seminar paper (University of Nairobi. Department of History), 79/80, n. 17
• Explanation of the Mau Mau revolt, Johannesburg : University of the Witwatersrand, 1983
• Kikuyu political thought and the ideologies of Mau Mau, Los Angeles (California), African Studies Association, 1986
• Mau Mau through the Looking Glass, Index on Censorship 15(1986), 19-22^[8]
• South Africa in question, John Lonsdale (Ed.), Cambridge: African Studies Centre, University of Cambridge ; London: Currey ; Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1988
• Unhappy Valley : Conflict in Kenya and Africa. Book One: State and class. Book Two: Violence & Ethnicity by Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, Eastern African Studies. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. London: James Currey, Nairobi: Heinemann, 1992
• Politics in Kenya by John Lonsdale and Wanyiri Kihoro, Edinburgh University, Centre of African Studies, 1992
• 'Listen while I read' : orality, literacy and Christianity in the young Kenyatta's making of the Kikuyu, Edinburgh, 1995
• Mau Mau and Nationhood : arms, authority & narration by E.S. Atieno Odhiambo and John Lonsdale, Oxford : Currey ; Nairobi : EAEP ; Athens : Ohio University Press, 2003
• Writing for Kenya. the life and works of Henry Muoria by Wangari Muoria-Sal, Bodil Folke Frederiksen, John Lonsdale, Derek Peterson (Eds.). Series: African Sources for African History, Volume: 10, Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2009
• Chapter 1. On Writing Kenya's History, in A Tapestry of African Histories: With Longer Times and Wider Geopolitics by Nicholas K. Githuku (Ed.), Lexington Books, 2021^[9]

• Kenya: one year on - have the wounds healed? on YouTube. Frontline Club, uploaded 29 August 2012. 03/03/2009. Video of a panel discussion on Kenya with Michela Wrong, John Lonsdale, Joseph Warungu, Martin Kimani and Lindsey Hilsum. Duration 1:31:28.
• Connan, Dominique; Siméant-Germanos, Johanna (2011). "John Lonsdale, Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Moral Economy: The Itinerary of a Pioneer of African History. Interview with Dominique Connan and Johanna Siméant". Genèses. 83 (2): 133–154. doi:10.3917/gen.083.0133. Retrieved 28 July 2022.