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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 May 2014
Once upon a time, in the euphoric 1960s, a new generation of historians of Africa undertook to write the history of Africa and Africans through the ages, overturning previous Western suppositions that Africa had no precolonial history worth investigating. As J.D. Hargreaves has written, they were “excited by the challenge to apply their craft to the continent which Hegel had judged ‘no historical part of the world’.” Among the explorers of the largely unmapped territories of prccoloniai history were members of the Makerere Department of History and their students, many of whom were to become professional historians. This essay sketches the construction of a modern Department of History at Makerere, a task requiring a new curriculum and a new staff.
Makerere began in 1922 as a government technical school for Africans. Courses in medicine and teacher training soon replaced the original more “vocational” instruction in carpentry, surveying, mechanics, and the like. The next several decades saw an evolution into a “higher college,” preparing students from all over East Africa for examinations leading to university degrees. By the late 1930s, a top-level commission recommended fulfilment of an early forecast that Makerere would one day become a university college. In the meantime, as World War II put off any substantial changes, it loomed ever greater as the legendary “mountain” that only the best could ascend. In 1950, finally fulfilling the forecast, Makerere joined in a Special Relationship with the University of London to become the University College of East Africa.
This essay is an outgrowth of research for a book in progress about Makerere University that will include an extensive account of staff development during the 1950s-1960s. I am grateful to J. B. Webster, Donald Denoon, Godfrey Uzoigwe, and Balam Nyeko for valuable comments on earlier drafts. Profs. Uzoigwe and Nyeko saved me from numerous errors of fact and are in no way responsible for those that remain. I also thank Prof. Webster for writing an informative memoir in response to the draft, and Prof. Denoon for sending his own memoir, “Kigezi,” within days of its composition. The following abbreviations are used below: EAISR—East African Institute of Social Research; EAPH—East African Publishing House; IUC—Inter-University Council; Legco—Legislative Council; LSE—London School of Economics; MISR—Makerere Institute of Social Research; ODRP—Oxford Development Records Project; RAC—Rockefeller Archive Center, North Tarrytown, New York; RF—Rockefeller Foundation; UEA—University of East Africa
2 Hargreaves, , “Approaches to Decolonization” in The British Intellectual Engagement With Africa in the Twentieth Century, ed. Rimmer, Douglas and Kirk-Greene, A.H.M. (Houndsmills, 2000), 104Google Scholar.
3 Mumbi, R., “Report of the Conference of University Administrators 4th to 7th September 1969 Held at Makerere University College,” 14–15Google Scholar; folder 57, box 7, series 477, Record Group 1.2, Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC; Mumbi was Assistant Registrar of the University of Zambia). Further references to documents in the RAC are given in the order of folder, box, and series numbers; these arc abbreviated in the following fashion: 57/7/477/RAC (because they are all from Record Group 1.2, that information is omitted from the formula).
4 Except where noted, information on the development of the History Department in the 1950s derives from the following documents: (1) an unsigned “Memorandum on the Establishment of a Chair of History” (9 July 1949; accepted by the Faculty of Arts Board on 20 July 1949), LSE Carr-Saunders B/3/16, which is the source of the first quotation below; (2) material contributed by Kenneth Ingham to the Oxford Development Records Project (ODRP), Box XXXIX/57; (3) Vowles, Paul's “Staff Recruitment for the Colonial University Institutions 1948-1951” (November 1983), ODRP, Box LXXVIII/119Google Scholar; and (4) Low, D. Anthony's “Uganda: Makerere, and Sir Andrew Cohen in the 1950s,” ODRP, Box XL/70Google Scholar.
5 Sicherman, , “Makerere and the Beginnings of Higher Education for East Africans,” Ufahamu 29(2001/2002)Google Scholar.
6 Ingham, Kenneth, “Makerere and After,” in The Emergence of African History at British Universities: An Autobiographical Approach, ed. Kirk-Greene, A. M. H. (Oxford, 1995), 113Google Scholar. Roland Oliver, visiting Makerere in 1949, was offered a readership and the chance to build the History Department; lie declined, supposing all too correctly that “for many years to come the best books on African history will be written not here [in Africa] but in England,” by African and non-African scholars (In the Realms of Gold: Pioneering in African History [Madison, 1997], 79Google Scholar). In 1948 Oliver was named the first lecturer in African history at SOAS, where he taught most of the first-generation Makerere historians—among them B. A. Ogot, M. S. M. Kiwanuka, Samwire Karugire, Balam Nyeko, and Godfrey Muriuki, a Kenyan graduate of Makerere who later taught at the University of Nairobi.
7 Ingham, , “Makerere,” 114Google Scholar; Wordsworth, William, “Prelude,” xi.108Google Scholar.
8 Ingham, interview by Carol Sicherman, Bristol, 11 July 1990.
9 Ingham, , “Makerere,” 119–20Google Scholar.
10 Ingham, interview; “Makerere,” 120.
11 Ingham, , “Makerere,” 114Google Scholar.
12 Ingham, , It Started with Herodotus: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered at Makerere College, the University College of East Africa, on 31 March 1958 (London, 1958), 19Google Scholar.
13 Ingham, , “East African History from Local Sources,” Makerere Journal 3(1959), 72Google Scholar.
14 Ingham, , The Making of Modern Uganda (London, 1958)Google Scholar, preface; Ingham, It Started with Herodotus.
15 Ingham, , “Makerere,” 115–16Google Scholar.
16 This was Oliver's view, conveyed to Robert W. July of the Rockefeller Foundation; July's trip diary, 8 February 1961, reporting a conversation in Brussels (13/2/475/RAC).
17 Oliver, , In the Realms, 227Google Scholar. On the intellectual (and political) context of Ogot's historiography see Cohen, David William, “African Historians and African Voices: Bethwell Allan Ogot and the Changing Authority of the ‘African Voice’” in African Historians and African Voices: Essays Presented to Professor Bethwell Allan Ogot, ed. Atieno-Odhiambo, E.S. (Basel, 2001), 47–55Google Scholar.
18 The comment comes in a six-page letter dated 29 April 1952 that Low and Philip Powesland (a lecturer in Economics and the Uganda correspondent for the Manchester Guardian) wrote to Cohen in anticipation of the letter's visit to the Makerere Senior Common Room (ODRP, Box XL/70). In the early years of the Special Relationship, so few students qualified for matriculation that “Makerere courses, as well as some special entry adult courses,” had to be run “side by side with the preliminary ones” (Macpherson, Margaret, They Built for the Future: A Chronicle of Makerere University College, 1922-1962 [Cambridge, 1964], 79)Google Scholar.
19 Mutibwa, Phares, “History and African Nationalism,” Uganda Clio 1(1971), 84Google Scholar.
20 Low, “Uganda: Makerere, and Sir Andrew Cohen in the 1950s,” ODRP, Box XL/70.
21 Dinwiddy, Hugh, “Makerere and Development in East Africa in the Colonial Period” (paper presented at the Conference on Uganda, University of Copenhagen, 25-29 September 1985), 4Google Scholar.
22 Uzoigwe recalled: “When I arrived in Kampala straight from Christ Church, Oxford, I had taken no courses in African history and had read no book on African history so-called…. That I was asked to draw up the African history survey course was mind-boggling now that I reflect on it. I recall I practically slept in the library and within a few months produced a syllabus that remained largely unchanged” through the Webster period. Personal communiation, 20 March 2002.
23 Ogot, B. A., “Oral Traditions and the Historian,” Prelude to East African History: A Collection of Papers Given at the First East African Vacation School in Pre-European African History and Archaeology in December 1962, ed, Posnansky, Merrick and Kirwan, L. P. (London, 1966), 142Google Scholar. Ogot received his doctorate in 1965; his dissertation was published as History of the Southern Luo (Nairobi, 1967)Google Scholar.
24 Ogot, , “Three Decades of Historical Studies in East Africa, 1949-1977,” Kenya Historical Review 6(1978), 24Google Scholar.
25 Ibid., The bulk of Beachey's 441-page book (London, 1996) concerns East Africa from the time of the Scramble; one would never guess that his own colleagues had pioneered precolonial East African history. There arc six references to Makerere historians in the entire book: an article by Beachey himself in the Makerere Journal; Low, 's Buganda in Modern History (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Kiwanuka, 's History of Buganda (London, 1971)Google Scholar, misspelling the author's name; Low's and Pratt, Cranford's Buganda and British Overrule (London, 1960)Google Scholar; Ingham, 's “scholarly” Kingdom of Toro (London, 1975)Google Scholar, which however fails to follow practices of oral history that were well established by then; and Twaddle, Michael's Kakungulu and the Creation of Uganda 1868-1928 (London, 1993)Google Scholar. As the present paper shows, Makerere historians published much new research on East Africa in the nineteenth century.
26 See Mutibwa, , Uganda Since Independence: A Story of Unfulfilled Hopes (London, 1992)Google Scholar; and Kiwanuka, , Amin and the Tragedy of Uganda (Munich, 1979)Google Scholar.
27 James S. Coleman to R. K. Davidson, 9 February 1969; 73/6/492R/RAC. At the time Coleman was the Rockefeller Foundation representative in East Africa.
28 Ogot, , “Three Decades” 25–27Google Scholar. Ogot toned down his anger in the version of this essay printed in a Uncsco volume entitled The Educational Process and Historiography in Africa (Paris, 1985)Google Scholar, omitting such terms as “conservative, almost reactionary” to describe the Nairobi department, and “hostile” to describe A. J. Hanna, the Professor whom he vanquished. The most recent of Ogot's many honors are the Distinguished Africanist award from the African Studies Association and the festschrift mentioned above. A journalistic review of his career reports that his memoirs “are ready for publication.” Oywa, John, “Reflections of a Top Historian,” Sunday Times (Nairobi), Lifestyle Magazine, 7 April 2002Google Scholar.
29 Denoon, Donald and Kuper, Adam, “Nationalist Historians in Search of a Nation: The ‘New Historiography’ in Dar es Salaam,” African Affairs 69(1970), 348Google Scholar.
30 Oliver, , In the Realms, 112–13Google Scholar.
31 Balam Nyeko, private communication, 19 February 2002.
32 Ngologoza, , Kigezi and Its People, ed. and trans. Turyahikayo-Rugyema, Benoni J. and Denoon, Donald J. N. (Kampala, 1998[1968]), 5Google Scholar. Danoon's essay “Kigezi” (January 2002), written for a festschrift, gives a personal account of his experiences in that area.
33 Webster, untitled memoir dated 26 October 2001.
34 Denoon, “Kigezi.”
35 Webster, memoir
36 Uzoigwe, personal communication, 20 March 2002.
37 Webster, , “A Note to History Teachers,” Uganda Clio 1(1971), 14–15Google Scholar. Of course there were African “severe critics,” but these tended not to speak out while in Africa. In the spring of 1969 George W. R. Kalule, the UEA Liaison Officer, encountered embittered East African postgraduate students in the U.K. and the U.S. Me reported “the students' criticism of the University [of East Africa], of former colonial rule, and of authority in general” (“A Report on a Visit to Universities Abroad,” 20 August 1969; 28/4/477/RAC). With respect to severely critical expatriates, Webster might have been thinking of the historians at the sister college in Dar es Salaam, who “often suffer[ed] a sense of guilt by racial association and [were] anxious to dissociate themselves from their older colleagues” (Denoon, /Kuper, , “Nationalist Historians,” 330Google Scholar). The embrace of oral history at Nairobi and Dar is evident in the proceedings of an international conference held in es Salaam, Dar, Emerging Themes of African History, ed. Ranger, T.O. (Nairobi, 1968)Google Scholar.
38 Webster, , “Note,” 15Google Scholar.
39 Ingham, , It Started with Herodotus, 19–20Google Scholar.
40 The ‘History of Uganda’ Project Under the Direction of the Department of History[,] Makerere University College” (October 1969); 73/6/492R/RAC.
41 Karugire, , History of the Kingdom of Nkore in Western Uganda to 1896 (Oxford, 1971), 1Google Scholar; Turyahikayo-Riigyema, , “History of the Bakiga in Southwestern Uganda and Northern Rwanda ca. 1500-1930” (Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1974), 43Google Scholar.
42 Nyeko, , “Professor Samwiri Rubaraza Karugire, 1940-1992: A Personal Appreciation,” Transafrican Journal of History 23(1994), 237Google Scholar.
43 Karugire, , Nkore, 13Google Scholar.
44 Webster, , “Research Methods in Teso,” East African Journal 7/2(1970), 38Google Scholar. The problems of white researchers in oral history stemmed from the colonial conviction of those whose knowledge they wished to tap that “useful knowledge (if not wisdom) was stored in the archives of the District Commissioner” rather than in their own “grizzled heads” (Denoon, “Kigezi”).
45 The term “paper” refers to an examination at the end of a student's studies; because most of the papers were based on courses, it may also refer to a course. According to the Faculty Handbook for 1972-73, 45, two of the History papers were to be chosen from a list of ten electives, seven of which were wholly or substantially African in content. All students, including those combining History with another subject, were required to take “Themes from European History Since 1760” and either “Uganda Since 1900” or “East Africa Since 1800”; single-subject specialists also had to take both “History of Political Ideas” and “Uganda Before 1900.” Research papers in 1968-72 were written as part of the History of Uganda project; almost all were based on oral sources and were potentially valuable resources for other researchers, but the disasters of the 1970s nude it impossible to do the additional work required to “bring them up to what could be regarded as finished products” (Karugire, , Political History of Uganda [Nairobi, 1980), preface)Google Scholar. That Mau Mau could be the subject of a paper is striking in view of Ingham's recollection that asking about Mau Mau had been “very dangerous” before the rebellion was suppressed in 1956 and also for some years thereafter (interview). Yet in 1960 K B. Welbourn, the Protestant chaplain and a lecturer in Religious Studies, organized a student study group on Mau Mau and published a synopsis of their conclusions (“Comment on Corfield,” Race 2/2[1961]: 7–27)Google Scholar. For the history curricula in other anglophone African universities sec Ashby, Eric, Universities: British, Indian, African. A Study in the Ecology of Higher Education (Cambridge, MA, 1966), 247–48Google Scholar.
46 Sicherman, Carol, “Revolutionizing the Literature Curriculum at the University of East Africa: Literature and the Soul of a Nation,” Research in African Literatures 29(1998), 129–48Google Scholar.
47 Webster, memoir.
48 Kiwanuka, interview.
49 Ingham, interview. Ingham remembered Kiwanuka's remark that Makerere needed “an infusion of medieval European history” (“Makerere,” 123). Recalling this episode a quarter century later, Kiwanuka—then serving as Uganda's Ambassador to the United Nations—confirmed Ingham's recollection of this conversation and characterized Webster as “a white man who was more African than the Africans” (interview with Carol Sicherman, New York, 23 October 1997), a comment that accords with Webster's own view that Africans were too influenced by colonial viewpoints. Kiwanuka's charge in the same interview that Webster “played to the gallery” in advocating curricular Africanization is belied by evidence of his sincerity in documents in the RAC cited in this article. Kiwanuka's own scholarly work focused on Bugnniln; little interested in non-chiefly Ugandan societies, lie was “pre-nationalist” rather than “nationalist” like Webster and his allies (Denoon, telephone interview with Carol Sicherman, 25 August 2001). Curiously, in the same year that he recommended medieval history for Makerere, lie poured scorn on Africans (including members of the Makerere Senate) who were troubled by “too much African history in their syllabuses” (“African Pre-Colonial History: A Challenge to the Historian's Craft,” Journal of Eastern African Research and Development 2/1[1972], 70Google Scholar).
50 Ingham, interview. Uzoigwe (personal communication, 20 March 2002) disputes Ingram's phrase “too narrowly African”: “I, for example, taught History of Political Issues and Imperialism; James de Vere Allen … taught English, European and Russian history; others taught American history, Commonwealth history, and Asian history.”
51 Webster to the RF, 22 October 1969 (73/6/492R/RAC).
52 Webster, memoir.
53 Some of the Nigerians were part of a staff-exchange program that included advanced postgraduate students who taught while they pursued doctoral research. The Biafra War made posts abroad attractive to some Nigerians, such as Uzoigwe, who completed his D.Phil. in 1967, the year the war broke out (Uzoigwe, personal communication, 5 April 2002). Adc Adcfuye was on the Central Lwo team while researching his Ibadan thesis (Onyango-ku-Odongo, J. M. and Webster, , The Central Lwo During the Aconya [Nairobi, 1976], xi)Google Scholar. A. C. Unomah—whose Ibadan Ph.D. thesis was on nineteenth-century Tanzania—came in 1970-71, as did S. A. Balogun. An interesting sidenote is that when Denoon was on exchange at Ibadan, he taught South African history, which the Makerere 1970 Visitation Committee had said was an inappropriate topic because the available materials concerned whites. The sources for the preceding information are in the Rockefeller files (74/6/492R/RAC) dated 23 June 1970 and 3 May 1971, as well as R. K. Davidson's trip diary, 24 and 26 March 1970 and Unomah's curriculum vitae. A decade earlier, Ingham had “expressed great interest in the possibility of exchange with other African universities” (R. K. Davidson, trip diary, 9 March 1960; 2/1/475/RAC), but the time was not yet ripe.
54 Webster, memoir.
55 They were (Report, 63) (1) at Makerere—Peter Emudong, Nyeko, Ephraim Kyamuhangire, M. Golola, D. H. Okalany, and S. Baitwababo; (2) in North America—Peter Nayenga and Benoni Turyahikayo-Rugyema at Michigan, M. Musoke at Wisconsin, James Mulira at Princeton, A.B.K. Kasozi at University of California at Santa Cruz, and R. Marani at Dalhousie; (3) in England—J. Odurkene at Oxford and Nizar Motani and Philemon Mateke at SOAS; (4) in Russia—Picho Owiny at Moscow (where he wrote a thesis on colonial Uganda “of the limited kind that was all that was possible for an English speaker working from the printed materials available in the Soviet Union” [Oliver, , In the Realms, 383])Google Scholar; and (5) in Nigeria—Peter Tibenderana at Ibadan. In his memoir Webster reported that he also sent one student each to Kenya, Zambia, and Ghana, as well as one to Australia. Samwiri Lwanga-Lunyiigo was the student in Ghana, where he worked with Merrick Posnansky (formerly at Makerere, teaching archeology and directing the Master's program in African Studies). He then returned to teach at Makerere. He is now a senior staff member in the Office of the President, according to Nyeko in an email posted on H-Africa, 29 January 2002).Those—the majority—who were researching East African history were supervised at Makerere when doing their fieldwork, which often grew out of their undergraduate research. Nayenga and Turyahikayo-Rugyema, or example, continued their undergraduate studies in doctoral dissertations at the University of Michigan, both supervised by Uzoigwe (who had reluctantly left Amin's Uganda for Michigan in 1971): Nayenga (writing as Frederick Peter Batala-Nayenga) wrote “An Economic History of the Lacustrine States of Busoga, Uganda: 1750-1939” (1976), and Turyahikayo-Rugyema wrote “History of the Bakiga in Southwestern Uganda and Northern Rwanda ca. 1500-1930” (1974). The latter used materials collected by the Kigezi team under Denoon and deposited in the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR), as well as many unpublished papers from the Makerere departments of History and Religious Studies (“History of the Bakiga,” 43). He later drew on his thesis for a book on Bakiga philosophy and religion, and was teaching at Makerere when Uzoigwe included his essay on mass nationalism in Uganda: The Dilemma of Nationhood (New York, 1982)Google Scholar.
56 Except where noted, my account of the department under Webster is based largely on documents in the RAC, amplified and corrected by Webster's memoir and comments from him, Denoon, Uzoigwe, and Nycko (sec note 1). I rely particularly on two documents by Webster—the report cited in note 40 and its successor, “Report on the History of Uganda Project, 1970”—and on a Rockefeller grant allocation (RF 68039, no. 106, 17 March 1969), which is the source of the quotation in this sentence; unless otherwise specified, documents concerning the History of Uganda project are in 73/6/492R/RAC. The genesis and evolution of the Kigezi research was somewhat different from that of the other teams, in part because Kigezi possessed “unusual resources and talents for the experiment of a collaborative History” written by traditional and trained historians (Denoon, , A History of Kigezi in South-West Uganda (Kampala, (1972?)], 10)Google Scholar. The Milton Obote Foundation sponsored the Kigezi research, which began in 1969 with a conference of traditional, amateur, undergraduate, and professional historians; it was conducted in the vernacular to enable “Kigezi history written by Kigezi people” (ibid., 10-12). In a letter to the RF's Davidson on 9 February 1969, Coleman explained that “teaching through research” had been pioneered by University Collegc/Dar es Salaam (cf. Court, David, “Higher Education in East Africa,” in Higher Education and Social Change: Promising Experiments in Developing Countries, ed. Thompson, Kenneth W., Fogel, Barbara R., and Danner, Helen E., vol. 2, Case Studies [New York, 1977], 482)Google Scholar. Webster described the project's procedures and methodology in “Research Methods in Teso” and in “Team Research”; the latter is in Onyango-ku-Odongo, J. M./Webster, , Central Lwo, vii–xiGoogle Scholar. Uzoigwe reprinted his team's questionnaires in “Recording the Oral History of Africa: Reflections from Field Experiences in Bunyoro,” African Studies Review 16/2(1973), 195–98Google Scholar.
57 Denoon, “Kigezi.”
58 Uzoigwe, , “Towards Updating the History of Uganda,” Tarikh 3/2(1970), 2Google Scholar.
59 Ogot, , “Three Decades,” 30Google Scholar.
60 Robertson, A. F., “African Ethnographies and the Development of Social Anthropology” in The British Intellectual Engagement with Africa in the Twentieth Century, ed. Rimmer, Douglas and Kirk-Greene, Anthony (Houndsmills, 2000), 169Google Scholar.
61 Webster, , “Team Research,” in Onyango-ku-Odongo, /webster, , Central Lwo, viiGoogle Scholar.
62 In 1969-71, the RF funded the undergraduates' salary and expenses; Ford, another major benefactor of the UEA, paid for typing and duplicating interview notes, translations into English, and the establishment of the departmental archive (“The ‘History of Uganda’ Project,” Oct. 1969). The grant description for the second infusion of Rockefeller funding pointed out that given the age of the elders who were oral sources, “it is extremely important to preserve as much as possible during the next few years” (allocation no. 129 from RF 70017 for $14,560, 4 March 1970).
63 Webster recalls that 19 out of 20 RF-supported Political Science postgraduates in one year were whites, most of them American, and that students thought that the department chair, Ali A. Mazrui, was “an imperialist agent” (memoir). Whether or not this is true, it suggests underlying tensions reported by others.
64 “Africans appear almost incidentally” in Ingham's Making of Modern Uganda, the purposes of which was “to trace the effects of British administration in Uganda” from 1894 (Uzoigwe, , “Towards Updating,” 2Google Scholar; Ingham, preface to Making). Coleman, who rejected Webster's appeal for support in 1971-72, later said he was glad to hear that Makerere had found internal funds to continue the project (letters to Webster, 4 January 1971, and to M. K. Sozi, Makerere University Secretary, 6 April 1971).
65 These figures are derived from “The ‘History of Uganda’ Project” (1969) and “Report on the History of Uganda Project, 1970,” as well as Webster, 's “History of Uganda Staff-Student Project” (17 February 1969)Google Scholar. The following staff are named: Webster, Uzoigwe, Denoon, Twaddle, Oliver W. Furley, Udo (supervisor of the Busoga team), Brian Bowles, John A. Rowe, Mutibwa, Okete J. E. Shiroya, Joseph A. Atanda, and Karugire. Thirty-two students were listed in the first year and 39 in the second; because Rockefeller did not fund the third year, there are no data in the RF files.
66 The lectures on the Peoples of Uganda drew on the papers presented at the Friday Colloquium on current historical themes established by Uzoigwe in 1968 (Uzoigwe, private communication, 20 March 2002). The Colloquium was the source of six articles published in 1970 in a special issue (“The Peoples of Uganda in the 19th Century”) of Tarikh, a history journal edited at Ibadan. Karugire was the only Ugandan—indeed, the only East African—among the five authors. Besides Uzoigwe, who edited this issue and contributed two articles, the other authors were Rowe, Webster, and John Tosh. Never explicitly mentioning the History of Uganda project in his introduction, Uzoigwe wrote that the lecture series was “organised … partly in response to the suggestion that an issue of Tarikh should be devoted to Uganda” (“Towards Updating,” 1). A later issue of Tarikh on “Government in Pre-Colonial Africa” (4/2(1972]) included articles related to their doctoral research by Mutibwa (on Madagascar) and Nyeko (on Swaziland) that reflected Makerere's precolonial emphasis. It appears that the lecture series was not repeated and that later teams were given only fieldwork training.
67 Webster, , “Research Methods,” 31Google Scholar. Meanwhile, in 1966/67, Ogot and his colleagues had introduced an Honours program in history at Nairobi University College that funded students so that they could use “the long vacation between their second and third years of study to carry out field and library research toward a B.A. dissertation in aspects of Kenyan history.” Achola, Milcah Amolo, “The Public Health Ordinance Policy of the Nairobi Municipal/City Council, 1945-52” in African Historians and African History, 113Google Scholar.
68 Uzoigwe, , “Recording the Oml History of Africa,” 187–88Google Scholar.
69 Webster, , “Research Methods,” 31–35Google Scholar; Tosh, , Clan Leaders and Colonial Chiefs in Lango: The Political History of an East African Stateless Society c. 1800-1939 (Oxford, 1978), 262Google Scholar. Tosh helped supervise students on the Bunyoro team while nearby in Lnngo researching his SOAS thesis. Webster's teams also used individual interviews, which Uzoigwe considered far more useful in the hierarchical society of Bunyoro—except in “more egalitarian … northern Bunyoro,” where some group interviews were “fairly successful” (“Recording the Oral History of Africa,” 193-94). Turyahikayo-Rugyema outlined the controversy in his doctoral dissertation (“History of the Bakiga,” 48-50). Makerere practitioners of oral-based precolonial history were criticized by such scholars as Tosh and David Henige as insufficiently critical of the evidence they cited. Henige later saw his own early assumptions as “naive” and argued that “much of the increase of our knowledge of early interlacustrine history is illusory” (The Chronology of Oral Tradition: Quest for a Chimera [Oxford, 1974], prefaceGoogle Scholar; idem., “Reflections on Early Interlacustrinc Chronology: An Essay in Source Criticism,” JAH 15[1974], 45).
70 Webster, , “Research Methods” 30, 36Google Scholar; “Noi! Noi!: Famine as an Aid to Interlacustrine Chronology,” in Chronology, Migration and Drought in Interlacustrine Africa, ed. Webster, J.B. (New York, 1979), 1Google Scholar.
71 Karugire, , Nkore, 1Google Scholar. The vocabulary of the students in the Teso team “was what might be called ‘Colonial Ateso’ which many of the elders either failed to understand or misunderstood” (Webster, 1969 report); hence Webster's interpreter assisted the students. Uzoigwe pointed out that elderly informants “tend to speak in an archaic fashion”; he thought that the multiplicity of dialects and the difficulty of learning a version of a language in sufficient depth justified conducting oral research through interpreters (“Recording the Oral History of Africa,” 192).
72 In his 1970 report, Webster commented on the “notable achievement” of Shiroya's team of six, which Webster hoped would “create the first piece of major historical writing on West Nile.” A book did not result immediately, but many years later Shiroya published research on northwest Uganda.
73 When he left Makerere for the University of Malawi (where he taught briefly before settling at Dalhousie University), Webster established “a fine tradition … of requiring honours candidates to contribute a long essay based on original research” in archives or oral sources in their home districts (Oliver, , In the Realms, 402Google Scholar). Visiting Malawi in 1988 in the middle of the Banda dictatorship, Oliver found these papers in the university library—“many … of more than passing interest.” Cohen (“African Historians,” 150n22) refers to “the enthusiasm and enterprise” of Webster's “oral historical research in Malawi, Uganda, and Nigeria.”
74 Coleman to Davidson, 1 November 1969 (also the source of the following quotation from Coleman). Other researchers likewise also placed unpublished material in the History Department archive; Tosh, for example, deposited translations of four sources on Lango that he had collected (Clan Leaders, 279-80). By 1981 there were “many student essays listed as ‘missing’ in the History Department” (Nayenga, , “The History of Busoga,” IJAHS 14[1981], 488n19)Google Scholar. All field notes for the History of Uganda project have been lost (Webster, private communication, 27 November 2001).
75 Webster was the Professor. The three senior lecturers were two Africans (Kiwanuka and Mutibwa) who had completed their doctorates, and an Englishman (Furley, then completing his dissertation on East African education). Of the eight lecturers, six were African; five of these had doctorates—Denoon (Cambridge), Karugire (London, obtained in 1969, three years after his B.A.), Shiroya (Michigan), Udo (Boston), and Balogun (Ibadan). In terms of national origin, three of the eight Africans were Ugandan (Kiwanuka, Mutibwa, and Karugire); three were Nigerian (Balogun, Udo, and Unomah, the last then writing his doctoral thesis); one (Shiroya) was a Kenyan; and one (Denoon) was South African. Two lecturers on contract, J. Keith Rennie (British) and Lionel R. Alves (American), further varied the staff.
76 Webster, memoir.
77 Robert Thornton, interviewed by Carol Sicherman, Johannesburg, 21-22 March 2001.
78 Those further along the pipeline had preceded Webster's advent, among them several 1968 graduates who joined the profession: Nayenga, Turyahikayo-Rugyema, Lwanga-Lunyiigo, Nyeko, and Kasozi. On the first three see note 55. Nyeko, inspired by Denoon to study Southern African history, went to SOAS to learn Zulu and SiSwati, spent a year in researching in Swaziland, and returned to Makerere to teach (1972-77) and complete his Ph.D. (1977); he taught at the University of Zambia from 1977 to 1992 (where he headed the department) and at the National University of Lesotho, 1992-2001, and is now at the University of Swaziland (Nyeko, private communication, 31 January 2002). Nyeko's publications include two volumes in the World Bibliographical Series published by Clio Press: Swaziland (1982; rev. ed. 1994) and Uganda (1996). Kasozi, who received a doctorate from the University of California at Santa Cruz, returned to Uganda after years in exile and is presently Vice-Rector of the Islamic University (see below for his research interests).
79 The persistent difficulty of hiring a specialist in Islamic history in Africa left that important field uncovered. A candidate recruited for postgraduate study by Ingham succumbed to parental pressure to enter the Kenya administrative service (Paul Vowles to Robert W. July, 3 May 1961; July's trip dairy on 13 February 1961 reported Ingham's hopes [78/9/477R/RAC]). Continuing Ingham's effort, Beachey made a fifteen-day recruiting trip during Christmas 1962; nothing came of this attempt notwithstanding his optimistic report that he had hired two people (travel grant, 30 November 1962 to Beachey; Beachey to RF officials, 5 February 1963). Another candidate, a Makerere graduate named Said Hamdun, was expected to teach both History and Religious Studies when he returned from postgraduate work at McGill. After a brief stint at Makerere, he went to the University of Nairobi but, having failed to complete his doctorate, was forced to leave academic life (Noël King, interviewed by Carol Sicherman, Corralitos, California, 17 July 2000). A further complication during the 1960s was an understanding within the UEA that Islamic studies belonged at University College Dar es Salaam.
80 Makerere University, Annual Report for July 1970-June 1971, 63.
81 Webster, memoir.
82 “In Ugandan society,” write Carasco et al., “it is the teacher or expert who holds the knowledge”; as outsiders researching in the 1990s, they found it challenging to persuade local participants “that they could construct their own knowledge and that their experiences are as valid as those of others ‘more learned than themselves,’ as they put it” (Carasco, Joseph, Clair, Nancy, and Kanyike, Lawrence, “Enhancing Dialogue among Researchers, Policy Makers, and Community Members in Uganda: Complexities, Possibilities, and Persistent Questions,” Comparative Education Review 45[200l], 277)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
83 Uzoigwe, , “Recording the Oral History of Africa,” 192–93Google Scholar.
84 The group included two undergraduates, two Ph.D. candidates (an American from Northwestern and a Nigerian from Ibadan), an Irish nun working on a Makerere M.A., a traditional historian, and Webster himself. The title-page of Central Lwo gives equal billing to Onyango-ku-Odongo, the traditional historian, and to Webster (listed second).
85 Webster, , “Research Methods,” 32Google Scholar.
86 Denoon, , Grand Illusion: The Failure of Imperial Policy in the Transvaal Colony During the Period of Reconstruction 1900-1905 (London, 1973), prefaceGoogle Scholar; Denoon, with Balam Nyeko and the advice of Webster, J. B., Southern Africa Since 1800 (New York, 1972)Google Scholar.
87 Denoon, , History of Kigezi, 12Google Scholar.
88 Webster, , The Iteso During the Asonya (Nairobi, 1973), viiiGoogle Scholar; idem., Central Lwo, ix.
89 Cover letter, 7 June 1972, accompanying “Report on Rockefeller Grant of 20,000/-. to J. B. Webster for the Preparation of Research Work for Publication Under the History of Uganda Project, 1972” (31 May 1972).
90 Oliver, , In the Realms, 341Google Scholar.
91 Nyeko, personal communication, 19 February 2002.
92 Oliver, , In the Realms, 353Google Scholar.
93 Webster, memoir.
94 Turyahikayo-Rugyema, , “History of the Bakiga,” 44–45Google Scholar.
95 The three books were two edited by Webster, Central Lwo, and (with C. P. Emudong, D. H. Okalany, and N. Egimn-Oknda) Iteso, and one edited by Denoon (History of Kigezi). “Asonya” was the Iteso term for the precolonial period; “aconya” was the Luo (Lwo) variant. Contracts for the first two volumes were signed with the East African Publishing House (EAPH), and each author was paid for his contribution; the third was to be completed by July 1973, by which time the participants were scattered around the globe. Meanwhile, the EAPH went broke. Two English publishers were interested in the two completed volumes, but nothing could be done since EAPH owned the rights. The only other viable alternative was the East African Literature Bureau, which fell victim to the breakup of the East African Community in 1977. Another outlet for historians was a short-lived series published in Kampala by Longmans of Uganda called Makerere History Papers, with contributions ranging from 30 to 66 pages. These included Kiwanuka, 's The Empire of Bunyoro-Kitara: Myth or Reality? (1968)Google Scholar, Kavulu, David's The Uganda Martyrs (1969)Google Scholar, Rowe, John's Lugard at Kampala (1969)Google Scholar, and Uzoigwe, 's Revolution and Revolt in Bunyoro-Kitara: Two Studies (1970)Google Scholar. It is impossible here to list the many articles, dissertations, and books stimulated by the project that appeared in the 1970s and 1980s. As one example, all but two of the thirteen contributors to Chronology, Migration and Drought, edited by Webster, had been associated with the project; nine of the chapters were presented at a 1974 conference at Dalhousie University (Webster, ibid., xv). Another example, reminiscent of Denoon's editing of the traditional historian Ngologoza, was Uzoigwe's edition of Nyakatura, J.W.'s Anatomy of an African Kingdom (New York, 1973)Google Scholar, translated by Teopista Muganwa, a Makerere undergraduate, and including an introduction by Uzoige detaling the formidable difficulties of translation and explanation. David Henige took Uzoigwe to task for neglecting “Nyakatura's training, motivation, and sources” and for failing to take seriously the question of “historical accuracy.” Henige, , “‘The Disease of Writing’: Ganda and Nyoro Kinglisls in a Newly Literate World” in The African Past Speaks, ed. Miller, Joseph C. (Folkestone, 1980), 258n13Google Scholar.
96 Nyeko's “Personal Appreciation” of Karugire, written after his death at 52 in 1992, reviews his career, which began when he took the “first First” in History. In his first professional stint at Makerere, he taught History, was Academic Warden of Northcote Hall, and was Director of MISR from 1975 until he fled in 1977. For two years (1977-79) he headed the Department of History at the University of Zambia (introducing an elective in East African history). In 1979, he returned to Uganda and became Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs in the first short-lived post-Amin government. When he returned to Makerere in 1980 as department head, lie was one of three full professors in the entire university; he remained in the department (except for a Fulbright in the U.S. in 1985-86) until he became Commissioner of Customs in 1988.
97 Webster to Coleman; Webster to A. R. Nsibambi, 3 February 1970, on “Graduate Student Accommodation 1970-1971.” In his letter to Nsibambi—a political scientist then serving as Secretary of the Warden's Meeting who two decades later became Museveni's Prime Minister—Webster suggested a way of making room for postgraduates in the crowded residence halls. It did not happen.
98 Karugire, , Roots of Instability, 3Google Scholar
