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The Christian Revolution in Buganda*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

C. C. Wrigley
C. C. Wrigley
Affiliation:
University College, Ibadan
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Extract

The kingdom of Buganda, which extends over some seventeen thousand square miles of very fertile country to the north-west of Lake Victoria, was the original nucleus of the British Protectorate to which it has given its name. It was, indeed, the first firm base which the British possessed in the interior of East Africa, and it provided the model, and to a large extent the personnel, for the administration of the surrounding areas. Buganda was also the first part of as East Africa in which Christian teaching took root, and the centre from which Christian beliefs were diffused among a wide range of heathen tribes. The Baganda were the first people in the region to become literate, and the first to take part, with any degree of willingness and success, in the cultivation of exportable crops.

Type
Articles
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , October 1959 , pp. 33 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1959

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References

1 “Uganda” is merely the form which “Buganda” necessarily assumes in the Swahili language, the first medium of communication between the British and the natives of the country.

2 See my article “Buganda: An Outline Economic History”, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., X (1957).Google Scholar

3 For an account of a Uganda tribe which is still thus organised see Winter, E. H.,Bwamba (Cambridge, 1956).Google Scholar

4 See, e.g., Speke, J. H., Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (London, 1864)Google Scholar; Roscoe, J., The Bakitara or Banyoro and The Banyankole (Cambridge, 1923)Google Scholar; Westermann, D., Geschichte Afrikas (Köln, 1952), pp. 328 ffGoogle Scholar. The specific historical theory advanced by these and other writers, namely that the basic negro population had been subjugated by invading bands of “Hamites”, who were caucasoid and therefore “superior”, is of very doubtful validity. See Fallers, L. A., Bantu Bureaucracy (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 27–30.Google Scholar

5 Kagwa, A., Ebika bya Baganda (Kampala, 1949)Google Scholar. Nsimbi, M. B, Amannya Amaganda n’Ennono zaago (Kampala, 1956).Google Scholar

6 The principal source is Kagwa, A., Basekabaka Be Buganda, 4th ed. (London, 1953)Google Scholar, amplified at many points by Nsimbi, op. cit.

7 The original meaning of Batongole seems to have been “bachelors”. The evolution of the word, which now denotes in general “minor chiefs”, thus appears to be parallel to that of “knight”.

8 The principle seems to be affirmed in Suna's personal motto: “Kings beget themselves”. In earlier times a brother or a cousin often succeeded, but son has now followed father for six generations.

9 The strength of the central government was demonstrated by the following episode. While Suna's father lay dying, the great marcher lord Sewankambo, the most successful captain of his generation, was summoned to the capital by the courtiers on a trumped-up charge of sacrilege. He came, without his army, and was duly deprived of his office and his property.

10 Much of the character of Ganda economics and politics is summed up in the poet's lament, which may be freely rendered as follows:

“Shall I buy me a woman, the pick of the bunch,

To dig in my garden and cook me my lunch?

I’ll have to make do with some skinny old thing,

For all the young wenches are wives of the king.”

It is said that the king was delighted with this tribute (Kagwa, A., Mpisa za Baganda, London, 1952, p. 264Google Scholar).

11 The principal travellers tales are those of Speke, op. cit., Grant, J. A., A Walk Across Africa (London, 1864)Google Scholar, and Stanley, H. M., Through the Dark Continent (New York, 1878)Google Scholar. A little later there were a number of missionary accounts, including Wilson, C. T. and Felkin, R. W., Uganda and the Egyptian Sudan (London, 1882)Google Scholar, Ashe, R. P., Two Kings of Uganda (London, 1889)Google Scholar and J. W. H., , Mackay of Uganda (London, 1891)Google Scholar. The most important anthropological studies are Roscoe, J., The Baganda (London, 1911)Google Scholar and Mair, L. P.,An African People in the Twentieth Century (London, 1934).Google Scholar

12 Low, D. A., Religion and Society in Buganda, 1875–1900. East African Studies, No. 8 (Kampala, 1957).Google Scholar

13 Radin, P., Primitive Religion (London, 1939).Google Scholar

14 Roscoe, op. cit. Id., “Further Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda”, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, XXXII (1902).Google Scholar

15 Irstam, T., The King of Ganda (Stockholm, 1944).Google Scholar

16 Kagwa, , Basekabaka, p. 60–61.Google Scholar

17 Kagwa, , Ebika, p. 104Google Scholar. Gray, J. M., “Ahmed bin Ibrahim – the First Arab to Reach Buganda”, Uganda Journal, XI (1947).Google Scholar

18 Kagwa, , Basekabaka, p. 89Google Scholar. Nsimbi, op. cit., p. 147. Roscoe, op. cit., p. 227.

19 Kagwa, Mpisa

20 This point is brought out with a wealth of illustrations by Gale, H. P., “Mutesa I – Was He a God?”, Uganda Journal, XX (1956)Google Scholar. His argument, however, is vitiated by untenable speculations (such as that Kintu was a migrant Copt and the religion of Buganda a corrupted Christianity) and by metaphysical bias. While he is probably right in linking the insignificance of the High God with the exaltation of the monarchy, he is certainly wrong in supposing that Mutesa really believed himself to be God. In fact, Mutesa was clearly a sceptic: he was above the gods because the gods were only fraudulent old men. His scepticism was not wholly proof against misfortune, however, and during his long fatal illness the priests regained a measure of influence.

21 Kagwa, , Basekabaka, p. 142Google Scholar. This statement is greatly amplified by Nsimbi, op. cit., pp. 104–5, and by J. K. Miti, History of Buganda (unpublished MS held by the School of Oriental and African Studies, London).

22 Casati, G., Ten Years in Equatoria (London and New York, 1891) II, 26, 61–2.Google Scholar

23 D. A. Low, op. cit.

24 On this, see Powesland, P. G., Economic Policy and Labour. East African Studies, No. 10 (Kampala, 1957), pp. 1–5.Google Scholar

25 These men are regarded as martyrs for the faith and the Catholics among them have been beatified. Thoonen, J. P., Black Martyrs (London, 1942).Google Scholar

26 These and the ensuing events are recounted by Kagwa, Basekabaka; Miti, op. cit.; Ashe, R. P., Chronicles of Uganda (London, 1894)Google Scholar; Macdonald, J. R. L., Soldiering and Surveying in British East Africa (London and New York, 1897)Google Scholar; Gray, J. M., “The Year of the Three Kings of Buganda”, Uganda Journal, XIV (1950).Google Scholar

27 E.g., Thomas, H. B. and Scott, R., Uganda (London, 1935), p. 23Google Scholar

28 Mackay of Uganda, op cit., p. 388

29 Their spirit is illustrated by Kagwa's comment on a serious setback. “If God had not been with us, that battle would have destroyed us utterly. For our leader (Nyonnyintono) had been slain, and many others also, and we were very few. Yet were we not dismayed, even for a single day, but our strength continued marvellously increasing”.

30 Foreign Office Confidential Prints, Nos. 5433 and 5867

31 On these events there is a voluminous literature. The best account is that of Perham, M., Lugard: The Years of Adventure (London, 1956).Google Scholar

32 Text in all editions of the Laws of Uganda.

33 Foreign Office Confidential Prints, Nos. 6951/32 and 6964/47.

34 Oliver, R., The Missionary Factor in East Africa (London, 1952), p. 184.Google Scholar

35 For a short biography see Gollock, G. A., Sons of Africa (London, 1928).Google Scholar

36 They are outlined in my monograph, Crops and Wealth in Uganda. East African Studies, No. 13 (Kampala, 1959).Google Scholar

37 This appears to be the principal motif of Kagwa's historical and ethnographical writings.

38 Whether this was ultimately a “good thing” is another matter. The continuing strength of Buganda patriotism is an impediment to the growth of the wider allegiance to Uganda which,, it would be generally agreed, must be developed if a viable polity is to emerge in this area.

39 This was made evident by their puerile attempt to frame their leading opponent – an attempt which was as futile as the desert island stratagem tried by Mwanga in 1888. Their refusal to permit direct elections, while it may serve to prolong their tenure of power, is also symptomatic of weakness.

40 See Apter, D. E., The Gold Coast in Transition (Princeton, 1955), especially pp. 104–5 and 304–5Google Scholar. (I may, however, have misinterpreted a writer whose language I do not fully understand.)

41 Frazer, J. G.Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship (London, 1905), p. 86.Google Scholar