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British Administrators, Colonial Chiefs, and the Comfort of Tradition: An Example from Uganda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2016

Beverly Gartrell
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Extract

This paper attempts to explain the manner in which British colonial officials perceived the bases of authority of their subordinate African officials, whom they called chiefs, during the years of colonial rule in Uganda. Many studies have shown how the British used a hierarchy of appointed Africans to carry out day-to-day administration (early studies include Apter, 1961; Beattie, 1971; Burke, 1964; Denoon, 1968; Fallers, 1965; Low and Pratt, 1970; Richards, 1960). The degree of continuity between this imposed colonial structure and precolonial political systems differed greatly from one part of the Protectorate to another, the disjunction being greatest where people had formerly organized their affairs without rulers. The present study focuses on British attitudes as revealed in two such areas of extreme disjunction. Other scholars have noted in passing that officials tended to assume that the wide powers wielded by these appointed chiefs were based on custom, even in formerly acephalous areas. Pratt (1965: 489) refers to this assumption as “a happy and convenient fiction” while Tosh (1978: 246) speaks of self-deception and “the confusion which bedevilled the official mind.” Research among retired officials who had served in the Protectorate administration revealed a widespread perception of these appointed chiefs as in some sense representative of the Africans they ruled (Gartrell, 1979). Some of those interviewed maintained that representativity derived from continuity with precolonial chiefly roles involving mystical ties between chiefs and people. They believed that precolonial chiefs had ruled even in areas where research has found no such precolonial political roles.

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Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , March 1983 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1983

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