Uganda Overview: History 2/18/2020

Early History

Around 500 BC, Bantu-speaking people migrated into SW Uganda from the west. By the 14th
cent. they were organized in several kingdoms (known as the Cwezi states), which had been
established by the Hima. Around 1500, Nilotic-speaking Luo people from present-day E South
Sudan settled the Cwezi states and established the Bito dynasties of Buganda (in some Bantu
languages, the prefix Bu means state; thus, Buganda means state of the Baganda people ),
Bunyoro, and Ankole. Later in the 16th cent., other Luo-speaking peoples conquered N Uganda,
forming the Alur and Acholi ethnic groups. In the 17th cent. the Langi and Iteso migrated into
Uganda.
During the 16th and 17th cent., Bunyoro was the leading state of S Uganda, controlling an area
that stretched into present-day Rwanda and Tanzania. From about 1700, Buganda began to
expand (largely at the expense of Bunyoro), and by 1800 it controlled a large territory bordering
Lake Victoria from the Victoria Nile to the Kagera River. Buganda was centrally organized
under the kabaka (king), who appointed regional administrators and maintained a large
bureaucracy and a powerful army. The Baganda raided widely for cattle, ivory, and slaves. In the
1840s Muslim traders from the Indian Ocean coast reached Buganda, and they exchanged
firearms, cloth, and beads for the ivory and slaves of Buganda. Beginning in 1869, Bunyoro,
ruled by Kabarega (or Kabalega) and using guns obtained from traders from Khartoum,
challenged Buganda's ascendancy. By the mid-1880s, however, Buganda again dominated S
Uganda.
European Contacts and Religious Conflicts

In 1862, John Hanning Speke , a British explorer interested in establishing the source of the Nile,
became the first European to visit Buganda. He met with Mutesa I , as did Henry M. Stanley ,
who reached Buganda in 1875. Mutesa, fearful of attacks from Egypt, agreed to Stanley's
proposal to allow Christian missionaries (who Mutesa mistakenly thought would provide
military assistance) to enter his realm. Members of the British Protestant Church Missionary
Society arrived in 1877, and they were followed in 1879 by representatives of the French Roman
Catholic White Fathers; each of the missions gathered a group of converts, which in the 1880s
became fiercely antagonistic toward one another. At the same time, the number of Baganda
converts to Islam was growing.
In 1884, Mutesa died and was succeeded as kabaka by Mwanga, who soon began to persecute
the Christians out of fear for his own position. In 1888, Mwanga was deposed by the Christians
and Muslims and replaced by his brothers. He regained the throne in 1889, only to lose it to the
Muslims again after a few weeks. In early 1890, Mwanga permanently regained his throne, but at
the expense of losing much of his power to Christian chiefs.
The Colonial Era

During the period in 1889 when Mwanga was kabaka, he was visited by Carl Peters, the German
colonialist, and signed a treaty of friendship with Germany. Great Britain grew alarmed at the
growth of German influence and the potential threat to its own position on the Nile. In 1890,
Great Britain and Germany signed a treaty that gave the British rights to what was to become
Uganda. Later that year Frederick Lugard , acting as an agent of the Imperial British East Africa
Company (IBEA), arrived in Buganda at the head of a detachment of troops, and by 1892 he had
established the IBEA's authority in S Uganda and had also helped the Protestant faction defeat
the Roman Catholic party in Buganda.
In 1894, Great Britain officially made Uganda a protectorate. The British at first ruled Uganda
through Buganda, but when Mwanga opposed their growing power, they deposed him, replaced
him with his infant son Daudi Chwa, and began to rule more directly. From the late 1890s to
1918, the British established their authority in the rest of Uganda by negotiating treaties and by
using force where necessary. In 1900 an agreement was signed with Buganda that gave the
kingdom considerable autonomy and also transformed it into a constitutional monarchy
controlled largely by Protestant chiefs. In 1901 a railroad from Mombasa on the Indian Ocean
reached Kisumu, on Lake Victoria, which in turn was connected by boat with Uganda; the
railroad was later extended to Jinja and Kampala. In 1902 the Eastern prov. of Uganda was
transferred to the British East Africa Protectorate (Kenya) for administrative reasons.
In 1904 the commercial cultivation of cotton was begun, and cotton soon became the major
export crop; coffee and sugar production accelerated in the 1920s. The country attracted few
permanent European settlers, and the cash crops were mostly produced by African smallholders
and not on plantations as in other colonies. Many Asians (Indians, Pakistanis, and Goans) settled
in Uganda, where they played a leading role in the country's commerce. During the 1920s and
30s the British considerably reduced Buganda's independence.