Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-gq7q9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-17T12:54:35.745Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political Activism and Other Life Forms in Colonial Buganda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2018

Jonathon L. Earle
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This article uses recently unearthed private papers and ethnographic fieldwork to explore the intersection of political practice and environmental ideation in colonial Buganda. In the early to mid-1900s, colonial administrators sought to draw Ganda interlocutors into abstract conversations about a natural world that was devoid of political power. Through Witchcraft Ordinances, imperial administrators sought to distance spirits, rocks, trees, snakes, and other life forms from the concrete world of social movement and dissent. But in late colonial Uganda, the trade unionist Erieza Bwete and the influential spirit prophet Kibuuka Kigaanira navigated environmental spaces that were imbued with political significance. Uganda’s economic and national histories, informed by methodologies that privileged philosophical materialism, overlooked how interactions with multispecies animated anticolonial politics and larger debates about authority. To challenge these earlier assumptions, this article shows how colonial literati and a late colonial prophet interacted with a natural world that was deeply political to conceptualize independence and challenge colonial power.

Résumé:

Cet article utilise à la fois des documents privés récemment redécouverts mais aussi un travail de terrain ethnographique pour explorer l’intersection de la pratique politique et de la formation des idées sur l’environnement dans le Bouganda colonial. Au début des années 1900, les administrateurs coloniaux cherchaient à attirer les interlocuteurs ganda dans des conversations abstraites sur un monde naturel dépourvu de tout pouvoir politique. Grâce à des ordonnances sur la sorcellerie, les administrateurs impériaux ont cherché à éloigner esprits, rochers, arbres, serpents et autres formes de vie du monde concret de tout mouvement social et toute dissidence. Mais à la fin de l’ère coloniale ougandaise, la syndicaliste Erieza Bwete et le prophète spirituel influent Kibuuka Kigaanira ont navigué dans des espaces environnementaux imprégnés de signification politique. Les histoires économiques et nationales de l’Ouganda, éclairées par des méthodologies qui privilégiaient le matérialisme philosophique, négligeaient la façon dont les interactions multi-espèces animaient la politique anticoloniale et des débats plus larges sur l’autorité. Pour remettre en question ces suppositions antérieures, cet article montre comment les lettrés coloniaux et un prophète colonial tardif ont interagi avec un monde naturel profondément politique pour conceptualiser l’indépendance et mettre au défi le pouvoir colonial.

Type
Towards Multispecies History
Information
History in Africa , Volume 45 , June 2018 , pp. 373 - 395
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anonymous, “Called Himself God and Fooled Thousands,” in: Seftel, Adam (ed.), Uganda: The Bloodstained Pearl of Africa and Its Struggle for Peace - from the Pages of Drum (Lanseria: Bailey’s African Photo Archives, 1994), 14–15.Google Scholar
Bayly, Christopher A., The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004).Google Scholar
Brasnett, N.V., “A Note Compiled from Various Sources by N.V. Brasnett, ‘Mahogany,’” Uganda Journal 2–1 (1934), 42–48.Google Scholar
Cassirer, Ernst, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Boston: Beacon Press, 1951).Google Scholar
Cohen, David W., The Historical Tradition of Busoga: Mukama and Kintu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).Google Scholar
Crabtree, W.A., “Bukedi,” Mengo Notes (1901), 58.Google Scholar
Earle, Jonathon L., Colonial Buganda and the End of Empire: Political Thought and Historical Imagination in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).Google Scholar
Earle, Jonathon L., “Dreams and Political Imagination in Colonial Buganda,” Journal of African History 58–1 (2017), 85–105.Google Scholar
Feierman, Steven, Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania (Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990).Google Scholar
Ggomotoka, J.T.K., “History and Legends of the Rocks of Kakumiro and of Some Other Places in the Sazas of Mubende,” Uganda Journal 14–1 (1950), 85–96.Google Scholar
Gray, John M., “Kibuka,” Uganda Journal 20–1 (1956), 52–71.Google Scholar
Gresham Carr, Harold, Flags of the World (London: Warne, 1961).Google Scholar
Hanson, Holly E., Landed Obligation: The Practice of Power in Buganda (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 2003).Google Scholar
Hanson, Holly E., “Mapping Conflict: Heterarchy and Accountability in the Ancient Capital of Buganda,” Journal of African History 50–2 (2009), 179–202.Google Scholar
Hoesing, Peter, “Kusamira: Sing Rituals of Wellness in Southern Uganda,” Journal of the International Library of African Music 9–-2 (2012), 94–127.Google Scholar
Jackson, Frederick J., The Birds of Kenya Colony and the Uganda Protectorate, 3 volumes (London: Gurney and Jackson, 1938).Google Scholar
Johnson, Jennifer L., “Fishwork in Uganda: A Multispecies Ethnohistory about Fish, People, and Ideas about Fish and People,” PhD dissertation, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor MI, 2014).Google Scholar
Johnston, Harry H., The Uganda Protectorate, volume 1 (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1902).Google Scholar
Jones, Ben, Beyond the State in Rural Uganda (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Jørgensen, Jan Jelmert, Uganda: A Modern History (London: Croom Helm, 1981).Google Scholar
Kafumbe, Damascus, Tuning the Kingdom: Kawuugulu Musical Performance, Politics, and Storytelling in Buganda (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2018).Google Scholar
Kalibala, Ernest B., “The Social Structure of the Baganda Tribe of East Africa,” PhD dissertation, University of Harvard (Cambridge MA, 1946).Google Scholar
Kasozi, A.B.K., The Spread of Islam in Uganda (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1986).Google Scholar
Kirksey, S. Eben, and Helmreich, Stefan, “The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography,” Cultural Anthropology 25–4 (2010), 545–576.Google Scholar
Kitching, Arthur L. On the Backwaters of the Nile: Studies of Some of the Child Races of Central Africa (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1912).Google Scholar
Kiwanuka, Semakula, A History of Buganda: From the Foundation of the Kingdom to 1900 (London: Longman, 1971).Google Scholar
Kodesh, Neil, Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010).Google Scholar
Lawrance, Jeremy C.D., The Iteso: Fifty Years of Change in a Nilo-Hamitic Tribe of Uganda (London: Oxford University Press, 1957).Google Scholar
Lenin, Vladimir I., Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline (1916, many editions available).Google Scholar
Lunyiigo, Samwiri Lwanga, Mwanga II: Resistance to Imposition of British Colonial Rule in Buganda, 1884–1899 (Kampala: Wavah Books, 2011).Google Scholar
Mamdani, Mahmood, Politics and Class Formation in Uganda (London: Heinemann Educational, 1976).Google Scholar
McCann, James C., Green Land, Brown Land, Black Land: An Environmental History of Africa, 1800–1990 (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 1999).Google Scholar
Médard, Henri, Le Royaume du Buganda au XIXe Siècle: Mutations Politiques et Religieuses d’un Ancien Etat d’Afrique de l’Est (Paris: Karthala, 2007).Google Scholar
Mukasa, Hamu, Simuda Nyuma: Ebiro Bya Mutesa (Do Not Turn Back: The Reign of Mutesa) (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1938).Google Scholar
Mukasa, Hamu, Simuda Nyuma: Ebya Mwanga (Do Not Turn Back: That of Mwanga) (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1943).Google Scholar
Musisi, Nakanyike B., “Women, ‘Elite Polygyny,’ and Buganda State Formation,” Signs 16–4 (1991), 757–786.Google Scholar
Peterson, Derek R., Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent, c. 1935–1972 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).Google Scholar
Peterson, Derek R., “Introduction: Heritage Management in Colonial and Contemporary Africa,” in: Peterson, Derek R., Gavua, Kodzo and Rassool, Ciraj (eds.), The Politics of Heritage in Africa: Economies, Histories, and Infrastructures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 1–36.Google Scholar
Pirouet, Louise, Black Evangelists: The Spread of Christianity in Uganda, 1891–1914 (London: Collings, 1978).Google Scholar
Purvis, John B., Through Uganda to Mount Elgon (London: F.T. Unwin, 1909).Google Scholar
Reid, Richard J., Political Power in Pre-Colonial Buganda: Economy, Society & Welfare in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: James Currey, 2002).Google Scholar
Rigby, Peter, “Prophets, Diviners, and Prophetism: The Recent History of Kiganda Religion,” Journal of Anthropological Research 31-2 (1975), 116–148.Google Scholar
Roberts, A.D., “The Sub-Imperialism of the Baganda,” Journal of African History 3-3 (1962), 435–450.Google Scholar
Rodney, Walter, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1981).Google Scholar
Roscoe, John, “Kibuka, the War God of the Baganda,” Man 7–95 (1907), 161–166.Google Scholar
Roscoe, John, The Northern Bantu: An Account of Some Central African Tribes of the Uganda Protectorate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915).Google Scholar
Rowe, John A., “Revolution in Buganda, 1856–1900. Part One: The Reign of Kabaka Mukabya Mutesa, 1856–1884,” PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin (Madison WI, 1966).Google Scholar
Schoenbrun, David L., A Green Place, A Good Place: Agrarian Change, Gender, and Social Identity in the Great Lakes Region to the 15th Century (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 1998).Google Scholar
Stephens, Rhiannon, A History of African Motherhood: The Case of Uganda, 700–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).Google Scholar
Stonehouse, Aidan, “Peripheral Identities in an African State: a History of Ethnicity in the Kingdom of Buganda since 1884,” PhD dissertation, University of Leeds (Leeds, 2012).Google Scholar
Stuart, Andrew, Of Cargoes, Colonies and Kings: Diplomatic and Administrative Service from Africa to the Pacific (London: Radcliffe Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Summers, Carol, “Young Buganda and Old Boys: Youth, Generational Transition, and Ideas of Leadership in Buganda, 1920–1949,” Africa Today 51–3 (2005), 109–128.Google Scholar
Summers, Carol, “Grandfathers, Grandsons, Morality, and Radical Politics in Late Colonial Uganda,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 38–3 (2005), 427–447.Google Scholar
Thomas, H.B., “Early Treaties Made by F.J. Jackson,” Uganda Journal 24–2 (1960), 260–262.Google Scholar
Thompson, Gardner, Governing Uganda: British Colonial Rule and its Legacy (Kampala: Foundation Publishers, 2003).Google Scholar
Twaddle, Michael, Kakungulu & the Creation of Uganda, 1868–1928 (London: James Currey, 1993).Google Scholar
Vansina, Jan, Kingdoms of the Savanna (Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968).Google Scholar
Vansina, Jan, Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa (Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990).Google Scholar
Walser, Ferdinand, Luganda Proverbs (Berlin: Reimer, 1982).Google Scholar
Welbourn, Fred B., “Kibuuka Comes Home,” Transition 5 (1962), 15–20.Google Scholar