Let us get the facts of Uganda’s history right
Jun 24, 2007
In Uganda, history has been a simplistic story describing how before the Europeans arrived, there were well-established kingdoms like Buganda, Bunyoro and Ankole between Lake Victoria and the western lakes.
By Merrick Posnansky
In Uganda, history has been a simplistic story describing how before the Europeans arrived, there were well-established kingdoms like Buganda, Bunyoro and Ankole between Lake Victoria and the western lakes.
In the north were Lwoo, people without kingdoms who spilled over as the Luo into eastern Kenya. There were also less sophisticated cattle folk like the Karimojong in the northeast. In this scenario things began to change when the first European explorers turned up in Buganda. First Burton and Speke, and in 1875 Stanley. His glowing descriptions of the Buganda kingdom led to the arrival of Christian missionaries, both Protestant (CMS) and Catholic in 1877. Apart from Christianity, they brought blessings of trade and civilisation.
This over-simplification of Uganda’s history has led to many misunderstandings. The least of which is to give a Lake Victoria bias to Uganda history, stress the accomplishments of early missionaries and concentrate on activities from the capital Kampala. It has led to a misunderstanding of the past that ignores the north.
Research in Karamoja has revealed the ancestors of early humans 15 million years ago. If linguistics are a guide, early agriculture developed in north east of Africa and spread south into Uganda. Early agriculture involved animals and crops like mullet, sorghum and probably bananas. As civilisation developed in Egypt, trade from the south brought timber, animal products, metals and slaves. With the collapse of Egyptian civilisation 3,000 years ago, the centre of gravity shifted to north of Khartoum, where the Meroitic civilisation existed for a 1,000 years followed by 1,000 years of Christian kingdoms.
With the collapse of these Christian states and severe climatic change, 700 years ago, people were displaced. The ripple effect was manifested in the Lwoo movements not only bringing pastoralism, but aspects of government and language hailing from the middle Nile.
In 1821, Mohammed Ali, the Albanian ruler of Egypt invaded the Sudan. Merchants went south for two most sought products — slaves and ivory used to make billiard balls and piano keys. The upper Nile became a boom area with slavers operating in ways not different from those of today’s Janjaweed in Darfur, ravaged large areas.
Samuel Baker in the early 1860s described Acholi girls being sold for as little as 13 English sewing needles.
In return for financial subsidies for a failing Egyptian state, Britain was given command in the Sudan to control the slave trade. First came Sir Samuel Baker and in 1874 Colonel Charles Gordon, an engineer who mapped the Nile valley, built a network of administrative and military stations like Dufile and Wadelai and introduced steam ships onto the Albertine Nile. This represented the first real globalisation of Uganda much more than the arrival of four CMS missionaries in 1877, three of whom died within a year.
Gordon’s emissaries visited both Mutesa and Kabalega. Emin Pasha, one of the most remarkable scientific scholar administrators ever to work in Africa, controlled Equatorial covering the Sudan and northern Uganda till 1888.
Military stations like Dufile covered more than four hectares, had surrounding ramparts five metres high with garrisons of hundreds of Sudanese and Egyptians. The fort personnel interacted with the local population, largely Madi and Lugbara and exported foodstuffs to the north. Dufile alone grew more than 35 different crops.
The forts were abandoned in the late 1880’s when Britain abandoned the Sudan following Gordon’s murder in Khartoum by the Mahdists. These Sudanese soldiers were brought down to Kampala in 1890 with their families, who now comprise Uganda’s Muslim Nubian population, by Captain Lugard to form Uganda’s first army, the African Rifles.
This history of the interactions between Sudanese and the local population such as those in northern Uganda was explored in excavations at Dufile in December 2006 and January 2007 by foreign scholars with support from the Uganda Museum and students of Makerere and Kyambogo universities. They excavated buildings both from the Egyptian (1876-88), Belgian period (1902-07) and discovered the first brick buildings built in Uganda 20 years before those of Villa Maria. They demonstrated the close interaction between the foreign troops and the local people and using metal detectors located bullets expended in repulsing the Mahdist forces.
All this provides a counterbalance to the previous history of the interaction between missionaries, kings Mutesa and Mwanga, that up to now dominated Uganda’s history.
The writer is a former senior Fulbright professor at Makerere 2006
In Uganda, history has been a simplistic story describing how before the Europeans arrived, there were well-established kingdoms like Buganda, Bunyoro and Ankole between Lake Victoria and the western lakes.
In the north were Lwoo, people without kingdoms who spilled over as the Luo into eastern Kenya. There were also less sophisticated cattle folk like the Karimojong in the northeast. In this scenario things began to change when the first European explorers turned up in Buganda. First Burton and Speke, and in 1875 Stanley. His glowing descriptions of the Buganda kingdom led to the arrival of Christian missionaries, both Protestant (CMS) and Catholic in 1877. Apart from Christianity, they brought blessings of trade and civilisation.
This over-simplification of Uganda’s history has led to many misunderstandings. The least of which is to give a Lake Victoria bias to Uganda history, stress the accomplishments of early missionaries and concentrate on activities from the capital Kampala. It has led to a misunderstanding of the past that ignores the north.
Research in Karamoja has revealed the ancestors of early humans 15 million years ago. If linguistics are a guide, early agriculture developed in north east of Africa and spread south into Uganda. Early agriculture involved animals and crops like mullet, sorghum and probably bananas. As civilisation developed in Egypt, trade from the south brought timber, animal products, metals and slaves. With the collapse of Egyptian civilisation 3,000 years ago, the centre of gravity shifted to north of Khartoum, where the Meroitic civilisation existed for a 1,000 years followed by 1,000 years of Christian kingdoms.
With the collapse of these Christian states and severe climatic change, 700 years ago, people were displaced. The ripple effect was manifested in the Lwoo movements not only bringing pastoralism, but aspects of government and language hailing from the middle Nile.
In 1821, Mohammed Ali, the Albanian ruler of Egypt invaded the Sudan. Merchants went south for two most sought products — slaves and ivory used to make billiard balls and piano keys. The upper Nile became a boom area with slavers operating in ways not different from those of today’s Janjaweed in Darfur, ravaged large areas.
Samuel Baker in the early 1860s described Acholi girls being sold for as little as 13 English sewing needles.
In return for financial subsidies for a failing Egyptian state, Britain was given command in the Sudan to control the slave trade. First came Sir Samuel Baker and in 1874 Colonel Charles Gordon, an engineer who mapped the Nile valley, built a network of administrative and military stations like Dufile and Wadelai and introduced steam ships onto the Albertine Nile. This represented the first real globalisation of Uganda much more than the arrival of four CMS missionaries in 1877, three of whom died within a year.
Gordon’s emissaries visited both Mutesa and Kabalega. Emin Pasha, one of the most remarkable scientific scholar administrators ever to work in Africa, controlled Equatorial covering the Sudan and northern Uganda till 1888.
Military stations like Dufile covered more than four hectares, had surrounding ramparts five metres high with garrisons of hundreds of Sudanese and Egyptians. The fort personnel interacted with the local population, largely Madi and Lugbara and exported foodstuffs to the north. Dufile alone grew more than 35 different crops.
The forts were abandoned in the late 1880’s when Britain abandoned the Sudan following Gordon’s murder in Khartoum by the Mahdists. These Sudanese soldiers were brought down to Kampala in 1890 with their families, who now comprise Uganda’s Muslim Nubian population, by Captain Lugard to form Uganda’s first army, the African Rifles.
This history of the interactions between Sudanese and the local population such as those in northern Uganda was explored in excavations at Dufile in December 2006 and January 2007 by foreign scholars with support from the Uganda Museum and students of Makerere and Kyambogo universities. They excavated buildings both from the Egyptian (1876-88), Belgian period (1902-07) and discovered the first brick buildings built in Uganda 20 years before those of Villa Maria. They demonstrated the close interaction between the foreign troops and the local people and using metal detectors located bullets expended in repulsing the Mahdist forces.
All this provides a counterbalance to the previous history of the interaction between missionaries, kings Mutesa and Mwanga, that up to now dominated Uganda’s history.
The writer is a former senior Fulbright professor at Makerere 2006