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History of Uganda

The history of Uganda is complex but needs to be understood, both within the larger paradigms of colonialism in Africa and within its own specificity in order to search for and support lasting solutions to the current war in the north. This is because the current war in Northern Uganda flows from the long series of conflict and violent political struggles that has characterized Uganda’s colonial and post-colonial experiences. The search for lasting solutions to this war must encompass the unresolved grievances of these inter-related conflicts. The following does not intend to represent a full history of Uganda and its people, but is intended to highlight Uganda’s colonial and post-colonial political history which has led to the current war in Northern Uganda.

What is now present day Uganda was composed of advanced kingdoms and dynasties before the Europeans and Arabs appeared in the mid 19th century. In addition to kingdoms were decentralized chief and clan led societies in which land was owned communally. Among the kingdoms were the Bunyoro, Toro, Ankole, Busoga and Buganda, from which the name Uganda was derived. Clan and chief led groups included the Iteso, Karimojong, Bakiga, Langi, Lugbara and Acholi. The major difference between how kingdoms and clan led societies governed is that under kingdoms, power was centralized under a king who administered powers through local chiefs. Chief and clan led societies were decentralized, with consensus-driven leadership exercised at the village and clan levels.

Foreigners did not arrive in what is now Uganda until the mid-19th century. The British arrived in the 1860’s, following the appearance of Arab traders twenty years earlier. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, linking Europe and the Mediterranean to central and East Africa through the Red Sea and the Nile accelerated European exploitation of Africa for its resources and potential markets and soon England, France, Belgium and Germany were competing for power in the Great Lakes Region. Egypt was also vying for economic and political domination in the region but by 1890, this power was solidly under European control.

The first major intrusion into local affairs was through England’s Henry M. Stanley, a white supremacist who led Buganda’s Kabaka (King) Mutesa to believe the British would assist the Buganda Kingdom with guns and military partnership to defend against the Kingdom of Bunyoro and Egyptian aggression. Stanley persuaded Kabaka Mutesa to invite Christian missionaries to Buganda, and to be open to a larger British presence. Mutesa wrote a letter of invitation, which Stanley had published in the British press. This drove public and private expectations for increased British influence in the Buganda kingdom, with plans for economic exploitation.

In 1877, missionaries from the British Protestant Missionary Society arrived in Buganda followed two years later by the French Roman Catholic White Fathers who competed with the British Protestants, much as Britain and France were locked in centuries-old competition for world power. At the same time, there was increasing Bugandan conversion to Islam, which started before the Christians arrived, including within Kabaka Mutesa’s court. Kabaka Mutesa himself observed Islamic traditions and learned to read the Koran although he never converted to Islam and felt threatened by the younger members of his court who did. The arrival of two Christian groups competing against each other and against Islam created confusion and conflict within Buganda society and in the kabaka’s inner circle. Conversion to foreign religions, especially Western-style Christianity, undermined faith in and allegiance toward traditional leaders, and chiseled away at the ability of chiefs and clan heads to govern. By the late 1880’s, a decade after the Christians had arrived, a new class of society had been created in Buganda, the “readers,” who transformed their religious conversion into political power, and pressed for “democracy.”

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