¹ The author is grateful to the Fellows and Associates of the East African Institute of Social Research, to members of the History and Social Studies Departments of Makerere College, and especially to the former Director of the Institute, Dr.A. I. Richards, C.B.E., for stimulating companionship in the study of Buganda society during the past five years. An earlier version of this paper was read at the Institute's conference held at Moshi, Tanganyika, in June, 1957, and received a good deal of valuable criticism there. Extremely helpful criticism has also been given by colleagues at the University of California and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the Carnegie Corporation of New York, whose grant to the Institute for a study of leadership in East Africa supported much of the research upon which this paper is based. The Carnegie Corporation is of course in no way responsible for the views expressed here.

² Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, tr. Henderson, A. M. and Parsons, Talcott (New York, 1947), p. 347.Google Scholar

³ Weber, Max, Essays in Sociology, tr. Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright (New York, 1946), pp. 186–187.Google Scholar

⁴ de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America (New York, 1946)Google Scholar; The Old Regime and the French Revolution (New York, 1955). Max Weber's thoughts on the matter appear in both the volumes previously cited and, at greater length, in Wirtscliaft und Gesellschaft (Tübingen, 1947), especially II, Part Three. Finding Weber's German very difficult, the author is most grateful to Reinhard Bendix for permission to read the manuscript of his forthcoming study, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait and an Introduction to His Sociological Work, and also for stimulating discussion of the ideas embodied in this paper. Many other social theorists, philosophers and historians have of course considered these matters, perhaps most notably Burke, Edmund in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (London, 1907).Google Scholar

⁵ As in other Bantu languages, a word in Luganda is formed by combining a root with one of a number of “class prefixes”. Thus words denoting persons are formed with the prefixes mu- (singular) and ba- (plural), so that a native of the country which we are discussing is a muganda (pl. baganda). Words denoting territories are formed with the prefix bu- and those denoting languages are formed with lu-; the country is therefore buganda and the language luganda. To make matters more confusing, early Europeans conversed with the Baganda in Kiswahili, the trade language of the coast, which is also a Bantu language but those prefixes are somewhat different. The territorial prefix, for example, is u-, corresponding to the Luganda bu-. Thus, to the first Europeans to visit it, Buganda was known as Uganda. As the British Protectorate was extended to other tribes, “Uganda” was retained for the whole, while “Buganda” remains the name of the kingdom with which this paper is mainly concerned.

⁶ For example A. R. Tucker, Anglican Bishop of Uganda, writing of Buganda as he knew it in 1890: “The system is roughly speaking feudal. The great territorial chiefs own allegiance to the king as their overlord. Under these again are smaller chiefs, all holding their land on a service tenure, and all alike liable, at any moment, to be called out for military duty.” Eighteen Years in Uganda and East Africa (London, 1908), I, p. 86Google Scholar. Tucker, who was a very acute observer, recognized, of course, that the parallel was not exact, but Western feudalism provided the most familiar analogy for him and for other Western observers of the period. They thus tended to overestimate the contractual element in the relationship between king and chief and the solidary, status group character of the chiefly elite.

⁷ Laws of the Uganda Protectorate, revised ed. (1935), VI, p. 1374.Google Scholar

⁸ A bound volume of the allotment lists is in the possession of the Registrar of Titles, Kampala, to whom the author is grateful for permission to use it.

⁹ Hailey, Lord, Native Administration in the British African Territories (London, 1950), I, p. 12; 81Google Scholar. Meek, C. K., in his Land Law and Custom in the Colonies (London, 1949), speaks of a “small landed aristocracy” being created (p. 133).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Thomas, H. B. and Spencer, A. E., A History of Uganda Land and Surveys and of the Uganda Land and Survey Department (Entebbe, 1938), p. 72Google Scholar; Meek, op. cit., p. 136. These two views may be found among officers of the Uganda Government to this day.

¹¹ The principal published sources on traditional Buganda society are: Roscoe, John, The Baganda (London, 1911)Google Scholar; Mair, L. P., An African People in the Twentieth Century (London, 1934)Google Scholar; and the three volumes by Sir Kagwa, Apolo, Basekabaka be Buganda (London, 1953)Google Scholar; Ekitabo kye Mpisa za Baganda (London, 1952)Google Scholar; and Ekitabo kye Bika bya Baganda (Kampala, 1949).Google Scholar There are also many valuable accounts by travellers, missionaries and government officials as well as, more recently, a rapidly growing volume of historical and biographical writing by Baganda in Luganda. A complete list of these would be out of place here; those of particular relevance to this paper will be cited where appropriate. Extremely valuable, but as yet largely unpublished, historical research on Buganda has been carried out by Mr. D. A. Low of the History Department, Makerere College; Mr. R. C. Pratt of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Oxford; and Mr. C. Wrigley of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London. The author is most grateful to them for access to unpublished manuscripts. Aside from all these written sources, the author has made use of data gathered by himself and other members of the East African Institute of Social Research in the course of field research in Buganda between 1954 and 1957.

¹² According to a memorandum prepared by the late Kabaka Daudi Cwa, a copy of which is in the files of the Resident's Office, Kampala, the Kiweewa was sometimes also the Ssaabalangira.

¹³ Heads of princely lineages remote from the present Kabaka are sometimes spoken of as bataka, the term which is used for their commoner counterparts.

¹⁴ Many examples of this process are given in Kagwa's Basekabaka be Buganda and in Nsimbi, M. B., Amannya Amaganda n’Ennono zaago (Kampala, 1956), pp. 68–95Google Scholar. Following the distribution of freehold estates under the Agreement of 1900, in which many bataka lost their traditional lands, there was a prolonged struggle between the latter and the chiefs who negotiated the Agreement. Memoranda prepared by the two groups, copies of which are in the files of the Resident's Office, Kampala, give further instances in which kings before 1900 dispossessed bataka in order to reward appointed chiefs. The land allotment of 1900 was in some respects simply a continuation of this process.

¹⁵ There were ten counties before 1900. As a result of their cooperation with the British in extending the Protectorate, the Baganda acquired additional territory out of which ten additional counties were carved, making up the present twenty referred to earlier.

¹⁶ Nsimbi op. cit., pp. 70–71.

¹⁷ Within each county, the senior subordinate chief held the title mumyuka, “second in command”. Among the county chiefs, however, there was no mumyuka because “Kabaka w’e Buganda tamyukibwa” (“The king of Buganda has no second in command”).Ibid., p. 70. This, of course, is not really true, for the Kabaka had his Prime Minister {vide infra); the idea, however, is meant to express the absolute incomparability of the Kabaka.

¹⁸ H. M. Stanley describes war canoes up to seventy-two feet in length and estimates that the Kabaka could float a striking force of between sixteen and twenty thousand warriors and canoe men. Through the Dark Continent (New York, 1878), I, pp. 313–314.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Interestingly enough, the progressive loss of direct political functions, i.e., functions regarding recruitment to major positions in the state, did not destroy, or even weaken, the structure of the clans. They retained control over the inheritance of property, including the freehold estates allotted under the 1900 Agreement. Today they maintain offices, with type-writer-equipped clerks, and their affairs are handled by a special court. They also maintain teams which compete at Buganda's current national sport, soccer.

²⁰ Stanley (op. cit., I, p . 297 ff.) describes in great detail the order of battle for Mutesa I's campaign against Buvuma in 1875 but does not mention the Mujasi. To the writer's knowledge, the first published reference is by Ashe in connection with the inter-regnum following Mutesa's death in 1884. Harrison, A. M., Mackay of Uganda (London, 1885)Google Scholar, letter from Ashe quoted on pp. 306–307. The inference is that the position of the Mujasi was created by Mutesa toward the end of his reign.

²¹ Kagwa, , Basekabaka, pp. 87, 91Google Scholar. These events occurred near the beginning of the reign of Ssuuna II, around 1840.

²² Speke, J. H., Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (New York, 1864), pp. 333–338, 364–365Google Scholar. Other instances are described in Stanley, op. cit., pp. 363, 393, 397–398.

²³ Kagwa, , Basekabaka, pp. 115–119.Google Scholar

²⁴ Ibid., p. 141.

²⁵ Harrison, op. cit., 112–177.

²⁶ The above reference to malicious gossip about chief's parentage would seem to contradict this, but there is really no inconsistency here. This kind of gossip is based, not on status values, but upon values of two other types: First, the Baganda are exceedingly nationalistic and gossip of the kind referred to often raises the imputation of foreign descent. Thus: si muganda ddala - “not a real Muganda”. Second, clan membership is most important to a Muganda and gossip may throw doubt upon it. Both clan and nationality, however, cut straight across differences in power, wealth and honor. Thus it is no disgrace to be the son of a poor peasant; it is only a disgrace to have one's nationality or clanship in doubt. To draw what would seem to be the closest Western parallel, gossip about foreign birth or ambiguous clanship has more the tone of imputed illegitimacy than of imputed lower class origin.

²⁷ In the traditional clan system, the burial places of lineage heads are the objects of strong group sentiment. These are known as butaka (literally just “land”, but the word in this form refers only to this particular kind of land) and the heads of lineages are bataka (“men of the land”). Some estates allotted in 1900 which were not traditionally butaka have come to be regarded as such by descendants of the allottees.

²⁸ Mukwaya, A. B., Land Tenure in Buganda. East African Studies, I (Kampala, 1953), p. 30Google Scholar. If anything, this estimate may be low.

²⁹ It should be noted that there are today perhaps as many immigrant Africans of other tribes in Buganda as there are Baganda, making a total population of nearly two million. Many immigrants become migrant laborers and short-term tenants on land owned by Baganda and toward them the Baganda landowners do indeed have group feelings of superiority and solidarity. In a sense one might say that the Baganda are becoming a superior status group vis-a-vis immigrant foreigners. As yet, however, the immigrants have failed to assert themselves as a group. They live on the fringes of Buganda society, though some of the multimately take up land and are absorbed. See: Richards, A. I. (ed.), Economic Development and Tribal Change (Cambridge, 1954)Google Scholar.

³⁰ This is an example of a rather common hostility on the part of some recent British colonial governments toward individual economic enterprise, a hostility noted in the Report of the East Africa Royal Commission, 1953–55 (London, 1955), especially Chapter 7Google Scholar. A policy based upon similar thinking has been applied in Uganda to the marketing and ginning of cotton, which were cartelized at the instance of the government in order to prevent “destructive competition”. Since this was done at a time when the industry was largely in the hands of immigrant Indians and Europeans, one actual, though not intended, result, has been to restrict African participation. In some important ways, then, government economic policy has retarded the development of economically differentiated strata among the Baganda.

³¹ Valuable accounts of the processes by which Christianity took root in Buganda are given in Low, D. A., Religion and Society in Buganda, 1875–1900. East African Studies, VIII (Kampala, 1957)Google Scholar and in Taylor, John V., The Growth of the Church in Buganda (London, 1958)Google Scholar.Doubtless also the converts' relations with the missionaries were assimilated to the traditional patron-client pattern; the missionaries appeared to young Baganda as powerful patrons. None of these “explanations”, of course, detracts from the genuineness of the conversions. Christianity has never had more genuine martyrs than those who were burnt, throttled and disembowelled at the order of the Kabaka during the persecutions which followed (vide infra).

³² Thoonen, J. P., Black Martyrs (London, 1942)Google Scholar; Ashe, R. P., Chronicles of Uganda (London, 1894).Google Scholar

³³ Lwanga, P. M. K., Obulamu bw’Omutaka J. K. Miti Kabazzi (Kampala, 1954), pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

³⁴ Kagwa, , Basekabaka, pp. 205–206Google Scholar. Horses were unfamiliar to the Baganda, having only recently been introduced by the Europeans. Kagwa remarks that this was the first time a Muganda had fought on horseback.

³⁵ There is no indication that the Christian chiefs viewed their overthrow of Mwanga as an attempt to change the form of the political system. There was precedent for overthrowing a Kabaka and replacing him with another prince. Kagwa reports that the throne of Jjunju, who ruled, perhaps, in the late eighteenth century, was usurped by his brother, Ssemakookiro (op. cit., pp. 66–70).

³⁶ On the whole, British officials have regarded the relationship in the same light, although of course the two sides tend to differ about how much remains to be learned.

³⁷ As part of the study of leadership referred to in footnote 1, the author has carried out, with the help of two research assistants, Messrs. Frederick Kamoga and Simon Musoke, a study of social mobility in Buganda between 1900 and 1956. The land allocation lists were taken as defining the elite of 1900. A numerically comparable list of present-day elite was assembled, partly on the basis of general knowledge of Buganda affairs and partly through interviewing, and an attempt is now being made to determine how many of the present elite are descended from those of 1900. Preliminary analysis indicates that, in general, the “higher civil servants” of the Buganda and Protectorate Governments are the most “aristocratic” groups, while the clergy and the elected members of the Lukiiko (legislature) (the county chiefs are ex-officio members and there are also six nominees of the Kabaka) are the most “proletarian”. Data have also been gathered on affinal relations among members of the elite and on their educational backgrounds, careers, and land holdings. The results of the study will soon be published by the East African Institute of Social Research.

³⁸ In an interesting pamphlet entitled Obuyigirize, Obulafu “n’Okwezaya” mu Buganda (date and publisher uncertain), the late Kabaka Daudi Cwa distinguished between the good things which had come from Western contact – religion, education and progress – and the bad things – increased crime, adultery and sloppy manners. The latter he lumped together under the term “foreignization”. A more efficient formula for maintaining one's sense of ethnic integrity while at the same time adopting large parts of another culture can hardly be imagined.

³⁹ The term “lip-service” is not used here in an evaluative sense. Adherence to any moral system – particularly a Utopian one like that of the Gospels – is always partial, but formal acceptance of the system produces a general strain toward conformity with its tenets. Also, there is no implication here that the Christianity of the Baganda is less genuine than that of Westerners, though because of the difference in their social-cultural milieu, Baganda typically are tempted, and sin, in rather different directions from Westerners.

⁴⁰ There has also been a tendency to launder the memory of the past. In the pamphlet referred to in footnote ³⁸, the late Kabaka wrote that in traditional Buganda there was no torture or human sacrifice and that the people followed the Ten Commandments before they had been made aware of them by missionaries.

⁴¹ In the time of Daudi Cwa, this official was known as the Provincial Commissioner and Buganda was considered a province of the Protectorate. More recently the terminology has been changed in order to emphasize the difference between Buganda, with its greater autonomy, and the remainder of the country, which is subject to more direct supervision by British officers.

⁴² A more detailed account of Daudi Cwa's relations with his chiefs and with the Protectorate is given in an excellent forthcoming study by R. C. Pratt, which the latter has kindly allowed the present writer to read. In another of Daudi Cwa's pamphlets, of which he seems to have published a good many, he accuses the administration of exceeding its authority under the Agreement in supervising his relations with his chiefs. This pamphlet is reprinted in Kaizi, M., Kabaka Daudi Cwa, Obulamu, Omulembe n’Ebirowozo bye (Kampala, 1947), pp. 185–193Google Scholar.

⁴³ W. P. Tamukedde, in a paper entitled Changes in the Great Lukiiko (East African Institute of Social Research, no date), has outlined the history of this body. Originally it was simply the daily gathering of chiefs at the palace for the discussion of whatever matters the Kabaka wished to lay before them. The name comes from the verb kukiika, “to pay homage”. In the 1900 Agreement, the Lukiiko received constitutional recognition, but its composition remained entirely official. Between 1939 and 1953, the representative element was steadily enlarged until, by the latter date, a majority of elected members was achieved.

⁴⁴ This is not to say that there are no “real” grievances to which the Kabaka can appeal. Perhaps the most important is the tendency of the British government to associate Uganda's political progress with that of neighboring Kenya Colony, a territory whose political life is heavily influenced by the presence of a substantial community of European settlers. This latter element has been insignificant in Uganda and Uganda Africans very much fear the consequences of any association with Kenya. It was a reference in a public speech to a possible future closer association between the two territories by the Secretary of State for the Colonies which was the immediate cause of the crisis of 1953.

⁴⁵ Some preliminary thoughts on the differences between Buganda and some neighboring states in these respects are offered in the writer's Bantu Bureaucracy (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 227–238.Google Scholar