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Uganda Long-Distance Trade and Foreign Contact
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, Uganda
remained
relatively isolated from the outside world. The central
African
lake region was, after all, a world in miniature, with an
internal trade system, a great power rivalry between
Buganda and
Bunyoro, and its own inland seas. When intrusion from the
outside
world finally came, it was in the form of long-distance
trade for
ivory.
Ivory had been a staple trade item from the East Africa
coast
since before the time of Christ. But growing world demand
in the
nineteenth century, together with the provision of
increasingly
efficient firearms to hunters, created a moving "ivory
frontier"
as elephant herds near the coast were nearly exterminated.
Leading large caravans financed by Indian moneylenders,
coastal
Arab traders based on Zanzibar (united with Tanganyika in
1964 to
form Tanzania) had reached Lake Victoria by 1844. One
trader,
Ahmad bin Ibrahim, introduced Buganda's kabaka to
the
advantages of foreign trade: the acquisition of imported
cloth
and, more important, guns and gunpowder. Ibrahim also
introduced
the religion of Islam, but the kabaka was more
interested
in guns. By the 1860s, Buganda was the destination of ever
more
caravans, and the kabaka and his chiefs began to
dress in
cloth called mericani, which was woven in
Massachusetts
and carried to Zanzibar by American traders. It was judged
finer
in quality than European or Indian cloth, and increasing
numbers
of ivory tusks were collected to pay for it. Bunyoro
sought to
attract foreign trade as well, in an effort to keep up
with
Buganda in the burgeoning arms race.
Bunyoro also found itself threatened from the north by
Egyptian-sponsored agents who sought ivory and slaves but
who,
unlike the Arab traders from Zanzibar, were also promoting
foreign conquest. Khedive Ismael of Egypt aspired to build
an
empire on the Upper Nile; by the 1870s, his motley band of
ivory
traders and slave raiders had reached the frontiers of
Bunyoro.
The khedive sent a British explorer, Samuel Baker, to
raise the
Egyptian flag over Bunyoro. The Banyoro (people of
Bunyoro)
resisted this attempt, and Baker had to fight a desperate
battle
to secure his retreat. Baker regarded the resistance as an
act of
treachery, and he denounced the Banyoro in a book that was
widely
read in Britain. Later British empire builders arrived in
Uganda
with a predisposition against Bunyoro, which eventually
would
cost the kingdom half its territory until the "lost
counties"
were restored to Bunyoro after independence.
Farther north the Acholi responded more favorably to
the
Egyptian demand for ivory. They were already famous
hunters and
quickly acquired guns in return for tusks. The guns
permitted the
Acholi to retain their independence but altered the
balance of
power within Acholi territory, which for the first time
experienced unequal distribution of wealth based on
control of
firearms.
Meanwhile, Buganda was receiving not only trade goods
and
guns, but a stream of foreign visitors as well. The
explorer J.H.
Speke passed through Buganda in 1862 and claimed he had
discovered the source of the Nile. Both Speke and Stanley
(based
on his 1875 stay in Uganda) wrote books that praised the
Baganda
for their organizational skills and willingness to
modernize.
Stanley went further and attempted to convert the king to
Christianity. Finding Kabaka Mutesa I apparently
receptive,
Stanley wrote to the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in
London
and persuaded it to send missionaries to Buganda in 1877.
Two
years after the CMS established a mission, French Catholic
White
Fathers also arrived at the king's court, and the stage
was set
for a fierce religious and nationalist rivalry in which
Zanzibarbased Muslim traders also participated. By the mid-1880s,
all
three parties had been successful in converting
substantial
numbers of Baganda, some of whom attained important
positions at
court. When a new young kabaka, Mwanga, attempted
to halt
the dangerous foreign ideologies that he saw threatening
the
state, he was deposed by the armed converts in 1888. A
four-year
civil war ensued in which the Muslims were initially
successful
and proclaimed an Islamic state. They were soon defeated,
however, and were not able to renew their effort.
The victorious Protestant and Catholic converts then
divided
the Buganda kingdom, which they ruled through a figurehead
kabaka dependent on their guns and goodwill. Thus,
outside
religion had disrupted and transformed the traditional
state.
Soon afterwards, the arrival of competing European
imperialists--
the German Doctor Karl Peters (an erstwhile philosophy
professor)
and the British Captain Frederick Lugard--broke the
Christian
alliance; the British Protestant missionaries urged
acceptance of
the British flag, while the French Catholic mission either
supported the Germans (in the absence of French
imperialists) or
called for Buganda to retain its independence. In January
1892,
fighting broke out between the Protestant and Catholic
Baganda
converts. The Catholics quickly gained the upper hand,
until
Lugard intervened with a prototype machine gun, the Maxim
(named
after its American inventor, Hiram Maxim). The Maxim
decided the
issue in favor of the pro-British Protestants; the French
Catholic mission was burned to the ground, and the French
bishop
fled. The resultant scandal was settled in Europe when the
British government paid compensation to the French mission
and
persuaded the Germans to relinquish their claim to Uganda.
With Buganda secured by Lugard and the Germans no
longer
contending for control, the British began to enlarge their
claim
to the "headwaters of the Nile," as they called the land
north of
Lake Victoria. Allying with the Protestant Baganda chiefs,
the
British set about conquering the rest of the country,
aided by
Nubian mercenary troops who had formerly served the
khedive of
Egypt. Bunyoro had been spared the religious civil wars of
Buganda and was firmly united by its king, Kabarega, who
had
several regiments of troops armed with guns. After five
years of
bloody conflict, the British occupied Bunyoro and
conquered
Acholi and the northern region, and the rough outlines of
the
Uganda Protectorate came into being. Other African
polities, such
as the Ankole kingdom to the southwest, signed treaties
with the
British, as did the chiefdoms of Busoga, but the
kinship-based
peoples of eastern and northeastern Uganda had to be
overcome by
military force.
A mutiny by Nubian mercenary troops in 1897 was only
barely
suppressed after two years of fighting, during which
Baganda
Christian allies of the British once again demonstrated
their
support for the colonial power. As a reward for this
support, and
in recognition of Buganda's formidable military presence,
the
British negotiated a separate treaty with Buganda,
granting it a
large measure of autonomy and self-government within the
larger
protectorate under indirect rule. One-half of Bunyoro's
conquered
territory was awarded to Buganda as well, including the
historic
heartland of the kingdom containing several Nyoro
(Bunyoro) royal
tombs. Buganda doubled in size from ten to twenty counties
(sazas), but the "lost counties" of Bunyoro
remained a
continuing grievance that would return to haunt Buganda in
the
1960s.
Data as of December 1990
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