¹ I have followed Richard Evans’ convention in using the uppercase “History” (or “Historical consciousness”) to denote the subject, and “history” to indicate the past; Evans, R. J., Cosmopolitan Islanders: British Historians and the European Continent (Cambridge, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, xiv.

² Reid, R. J., “Past and Presentism: The ‘Precolonial’ and the Foreshortening of African History,” Journal of African History 52, 2 (2011): 135–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Notably, see Peterson, D. R. and Macola, G., eds., Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa (Athens, Oh., 2009).Google Scholar

⁴ D. R. Peterson, “States of Mind: Political History, and the Rwenzururu Kingdom in Western Uganda,” in ibid.

⁵ Falola, T. and Aderinto, S., Nigeria, Nationalism and Writing History (Rochester, 2010).Google Scholar

⁶ Denoon, D. and Kuper, A., “Nationalist Historians in Search of a Nation: The “New Historiography” in Dar es Salaam,” African Affairs 69, 277 (1970): 329–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ranger, T., ed., Emerging Themes of African History: Proceedings of the International Congress of African Historians, Dar es Salaam, October 1965 (Dar es Salaam, 1968)Google Scholar.

⁷ Fussner, F. Smith, The Historical Revolution: English Historical Writing and Thought, 1580–1640 (London, 1962)Google Scholar; also Thomas, K., Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1991 [1971])Google Scholar.

⁸ In particular, see work by Smith, Anthony D.: The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar; and Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar.

⁹ For example, Clark, J.C.D., Our Shadowed Present: Modernism, Postmodernism and History (London, 2003)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Stafford, R., “Scientific Exploration and Empire,” in Porter, A., ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire: Vol. III, The Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar; Stocking, G. W., Victorian Anthropology (New York, 1987)Google Scholar.

¹¹ Speke, J. H., Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (Edinburgh, 1863)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 9.

¹² For example, Lugard, F. D., The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (Edinburgh and London, 1923)Google Scholar, 617.

¹³ A sample of late-nineteenth-century writing containing at least some Historical analysis might include: Speke, Journal of the Discovery; Stanley, H. M., Through the Dark Continent, 2 vols. (London, 1899)Google Scholar; Wilson, C. T. and Felkin, R. W., Uganda and the Egyptian Soudan, 2 vols. (London, 1882)Google Scholar; Felkin, R. W., “Notes on the Waganda Tribe of Central Africa,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 13 (1885–1886): 699–770Google Scholar; Mackay, A. M., A. M. Mackay, Pioneer Missionary of the Church Missionary Society to Uganda, edited by his sister (London, 1890)Google Scholar; Ashe, R. P., Chronicles of Uganda (London, 1894)Google Scholar; Macdonald, J.R.L., Soldiering and Surveying in British East Africa (London, 1897)Google Scholar; Peters, K., New Light on Dark Africa, Dulcken, H. W., trans. (London, 1891)Google Scholar; Portal, G., The British Mission to Uganda in 1893 (London, 1894).Google Scholar

¹⁴ “Ganda” are the people of Buganda, and “Nyoro” the people of Bunyoro. “Ugandan” is the territory-wide identification.

¹⁵ For a fine survey of material, see Rowe, J., “Myth, Memoir and Moral Admonition: Luganda Historical Writing, 1893–1969,” Uganda Journal 33, 1 (1969): 17–40Google Scholar, and 34, 1 (1970): 217–19. For the debate on the nature of Ganda oral tradition, see Wrigley, C., Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty (Cambridge, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Henige, D., “‘The Disease of Writing’: Ganda and Nyoro Kinglists in a Newly Literate World,” in Miller, J. C., ed., The African Past Speaks (Folkestone and Hamden, 1980)Google Scholar; and Ray, B., Myth, Ritual and Kingship in Buganda (New York, 1991)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Hanson, H., Landed Obligation: The Practice of Power in Buganda (Portsmouth, N.H., 2003)Google Scholar; Kodesh, N., Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda (Charlottesville, 2010).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Twaddle, M., Kakungulu and the Creation of Uganda (London, 1993).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Roscoe's work included: The Baganda: An Account of Their Native Customs and Beliefs (London, 1911)Google Scholar; The Bakitara or Banyoro (Cambridge, 1923)Google Scholar; and The Banyankole (Cambridge, 1923)Google Scholar. For analysis of the relationship between Roscoe and Kagwa, see Rowe, J., “Roscoe's and Kagwa's Buganda,” Journal of African History 8, 1 (1967): 163–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ray, Myth, Ritual and Kingship; and Wrigley, Kingship and State.

¹⁹ The most commonly used English translation is Kiwanuka, M.S.M.'s The Kings of Buganda (Nairobi, 1971).Google Scholar

²⁰ An English edition, edited by Edel, M. M. and translated patchily by Kalibala, E. B., appeared as The Customs of the Baganda, under the auspices of Columbia University Press in New York in 1934.Google Scholar

²¹ A. Kagwa, “A Book of Clans of Buganda,” J. Wamala, trans., Makerere University Library, MS., ca. 1972.

²² Gorju, J., Entre le Victoria, l'Albert et l'Edouard (Rennes, 1920).Google Scholar

²³ Low, D. A., “The Making and Implementation of the Uganda Agreement of 1900,” in Low, D. A. and Pratt, R. C., Buganda and British Overrule, 1900–1955 (London, 1960)Google Scholar; Hanson, H., Landed Obligation: The Practice of Power in Buganda (Portsmouth, N.H., 2003), 127–63.Google Scholar

²⁴ For the most recent research into Kintu and his uses, see Medard, H., “Proto-Nationalism, Religion and Race: The Many Cloths of Kintu, First King of Buganda (18^th–20^th Centuries),” in Panella, C., ed., Lives in Motion, Indeed: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Social Change in Honour of Danielle de Lame (Tervuren, 2012)Google Scholar; also Medard, H., Le Royaume du Buganda au XIXe siècle (Paris, 2007)Google Scholar, 100ff.

²⁵ Ray, Myth, Ritual, and Kingship, 99–103.

²⁶ Rowe, “Myth,” 218.

²⁷ Ray, Myth, Ritual, and Kingship, 102; Kagwa, Kings, 42.

²⁸ Rowe, “Myth,” 23, 219.

²⁹ Ibid., 24–25.

³⁰ Reproduced in Low, D. A., ed., The Mind of Buganda: Documents in the Modern History of a Kingdom (London, 1971), 104–8.Google Scholar

³¹ Rowe, “Myth,” 24–25.

³² A translated manuscript of Zimbe's work by F. Kamoga is in Makerere University Library, Uganda. See also Rowe, “Myth,” 24.

³³ This is held by the Special Collections Department of the School of Oriental and African Studies Library.

³⁴ For example, Mukasa produced an account of his and Apolo Kagwa's visit to Britain in 1902. See Gikandi, Simon, ed., Uganda's Katikiro in England, by Ham Mukasa (Manchester and New York, 1998)Google Scholar.

³⁵ The first and second volumes are dated 1938 and 1942, respectively. The last volume was thought lost until Mukasa's son James and the American scholar John Rowe discovered it among his papers in 1964.

³⁶ Bikunya, P., Ky'Abakama ba Bunyoro (London, 1927).Google Scholar

³⁷ Beattie, J., The Nyoro State (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar, 34. See Fisher's, Ruth misleadingly titled Twilight Tales of the Black Baganda (London, 1911)Google Scholar.

³⁸ Henige, “Disease of Writing,” 244–45.

³⁹ Beattie, Nyoro State, 41.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 59.

⁴¹ Doyle, S., Crisis and Decline in Bunyoro: Population and Environment in Western Uganda, 1860–1955 (Oxford, 2006), 164–82.Google Scholar

⁴² Ibid., 165, 166.

⁴³ “The Kings of Bunyoro-Kitara,” parts I, II, and III appeared in the Uganda Journal 3, 2 (1935): 155–60Google Scholar; 4, 1 (1936): 75–83; and 5, 2 (1937): 53–69.

⁴⁴ Uzoigwe, G. N., ed., Anatomy of an African Kingdom: A History of Bunyoro-Kitara (New York, 1973)Google Scholar, is an English translation.

⁴⁵ John Nyakatura, Preface, in ibid., ix.

⁴⁶ Doyle, Crisis and Decline, 176.

⁴⁷ Beattie, Nyoro State, 114.

⁴⁸ Doyle, Crisis and Decline, 179.

⁴⁹ Beattie, Nyoro State, 31.

⁵⁰ Ingrams, H., Uganda: A Crisis of Nationhood (London, 1960), 238–39.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Beattie, Nyoro State, 32, 58.

⁵² Rowe, “Myth,” 25–26.

⁵³ Karugire, S. R., A History of the Kingdom of Nkore in Western Uganda to 1896 (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar, 3.

⁵⁴ Published in Kampala, Abagabe b'Ankole has yet to be translated into English, although later work by H. F. Morris drew on much the same raw data. See, for example, A History of Ankole (Kampala, 1962)Google Scholar; and The Heroic Recitations of the Bahima of Ankole (Oxford, 1964).Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Tripp, A. M., Museveni's Uganda: Paradoxes of Power in a Hybrid Regime (London, 2010)Google Scholar, 61.

⁵⁶ Karugire, History, 2–3.

⁵⁷ Ingrams, Uganda, 239.

⁵⁸ Apter, D., The Political Kingdom in Uganda: A Study in Bureaucratic Nationalism (Princeton, 1961)Google Scholar, 204.

⁵⁹ See work by Summers, C.: “Young Buganda and Old Boys: Youth, Generational Transition, and Ideas of Leadership in Buganda, 1920–1949,” Africa Today 51, 3 (2005): 109–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Grandfathers, Grandsons, Morality, and Radical Politics in Late Colonial Buganda,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 38, 3 (2005): 427–47.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Low, D. A., Buganda in Modern History (London, 1971)Google Scholar, 94, 176.

⁶¹ Gertzel, C., “Kingdoms, Districts, and the Unitary State: Uganda, 1945–1962,” in Low, D. A. and Smith, A., eds., History of East Africa, Vol. III (Oxford, 1976), 80–81.Google Scholar

⁶² Hancock, I. R., “Patriotism and Neo-Traditionalism in Buganda: The Kabaka Yekka (“the King Alone”) Movement, 1961–62,” Journal of African History 11, 3 (1970): 419–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Low, Buganda in Modern History, esp. ch. 6.

⁶³ Rowe, “Myth,” 26–27.

⁶⁴ For recent pioneering work on Historical writing in this period, see Jonathan Earle, “Political Theologies in Late Colonial Buganda,” PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012.

⁶⁵ Low, Buganda in Modern History, 215–16.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 245–46.

⁶⁷ Northern Uganda had attracted less scholarly interest than the south has, even during the years of Makerere's expansion in the 1950s and 1960s. Exceptions included: Southall, A., Alur Society: A Study in Processes and Types of Domination (Cambridge, 1956)Google Scholar, and Lawrance, J.C.D., The Iteso: Fifty Years of Change in a Nilo-Hamitic Tribe of Uganda (London, 1957)Google Scholar. Historical work on the north has remained thin, an exception being: Atkinson, R. R., The Roots of Ethnicity: The Origins of the Acholi of Uganda Before 1800 (Philadelphia, 1994)Google Scholar. Historically minded anthropologists have done more, as was also the case in the 1950s.

⁶⁸ Again, see Earle, “Political Theologies,” for insights into the various adaptations of monarchical history during this critical “moment.”

⁶⁹ See also Thompson, G., Governing Uganda: British Colonial Rule and Its Legacy (Kampala, 2003)Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ “Annexure to the Appeal by Kabaka Mutesa II to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, 11 March 1966,” in Low, D. A., ed., The Mind of Buganda: Documents in the Modern History of a Kingdom (London, 1971)Google Scholar, 222. See also Mutesa II, Kabaka of Buganda, The Desecration of My Kingdom (London, 1967).Google Scholar

⁷¹ Makerere was founded as a technical school in 1922, but began to develop as an institution of higher education in the late 1930s, and became affiliated to the University of London as a University College in 1949. In 1963 it was one campus of the University of East Africa, the others being at Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. When this was disbanded in 1970, Makerere University became the national university of Uganda.

⁷² Sicherman, C., Becoming an African University: Makerere, 1922–2000 (Kampala, 2005)Google Scholar, 11.

⁷³ Oliver, R., In the Realms of Gold: Pioneering in African History (London, 1997), 78–79.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ See, for example, by Oliver, Roland, The Missionary Factor in East Africa (London, 1952)Google Scholar; and Sir Harry Johnston and the Scramble for Africa (London, 1957)Google Scholar; by Low, Tony, Religion and Society in Buganda 1875–1900 (Kampala, 1957)Google Scholar; and by Low and R. C. Pratt, Buganda and British Overrule. Most recently, see Low'sFabrication of Empire: The British and the Uganda Kingdoms, 1890–1902 (Cambridge, 2009).Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Sicherman, Makerere, 91–92.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 113.

⁷⁷ Ibid., 258.

⁷⁸ Smith, Cultural Foundations, 5.

⁷⁹ Anderson, B., Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1991 [1983]).Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Smith, Cultural Foundations, 3–4.

⁸¹ Ingrams, Uganda. It is worth noting, too, that the first volume of Oxford University Press' History of East Africa (1963), edited by Roland Oliver and Gervase Mathew, was partly the outcome of Colonial Office initiative and funding.

⁸² Richards, A. I., ed., East African Chiefs: A Study of Political Development in Some Ugandan and Tanganyika Tribes (London, 1959).Google Scholar

⁸³ Quoted in Mamdani, M., Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, 1996)Google Scholar, 135.

⁸⁴ See Nyerere, Julius's “Opening Speech,” in Ranger, T., ed., Emerging Themes of African History: Proceedings of the International Congress of African Historians, Dar es Salaam, October 1965 (Dar es Salaam, 1968).Google Scholar

⁸⁵ “Sir Edward's Last Journey,” Drum magazine, May 1971.

⁸⁶ See, for example, Mutibwa, P., Uganda since Independence: A Story of Unfulfilled Hopes (London, 1992).Google Scholar

⁸⁷ International Crisis Group, Uganda: No Resolution to Growing Tensions, Africa Report 187, 5 Apr. 2012, 13.

⁸⁸ Tripp, Museveni's Uganda, 120–21.

⁸⁹ “Why Kasubi Fire Might Backfire,” Observer (Kampala), 21 Mar. 2010.

⁹⁰ Quoted in International Crisis Group, Uganda, 13.

⁹¹ Ibid., 14.

⁹² For example, Lugard, Dual Mandate, 215–17, 581.

⁹³ Some of the following section is based on informal discussions with History Department staff at Makerere University and at Kyambogo University, in Kampala, between 2010 and 2012. These meetings were part of my preliminary work for my larger Leverhulme-funded project. Anonymity is required to protect sources.

⁹⁴ Informal interviews at Makerere University, June 2011 and Aug. 2012.

⁹⁵ See, for example, Ephraim Kamuhangire, “Don't Destroy the Museum,” New Vision (Kampala), 10 Mar. 2011.

⁹⁶ Museveni, Y., Sowing the Mustard Seed: The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in Uganda (Oxford, 1997), 24–26.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Ibid., 14.

⁹⁸ Private interview, Kampala, Aug. 2012.

⁹⁹ That said, former historians abound in government service, and include a large number of presidential advisors. But this more likely represents a process of intellectual co-option, and indicates that academics seek relatively well-paid positions in and around State House.

¹⁰⁰ Museveni, Sowing the Mustard Seed, 188.

¹⁰¹ Personal communication, Kampala, Aug. 2012.

¹⁰² Lonsdale, J., “Town Life in Colonial Kenya,” in Burton, A., ed., The Urban Experience in Eastern Africa c. 1750–2000 (Nairobi, 2002)Google Scholar, 213.

¹⁰³ Burrow, J., A History of Histories (London, 2007)Google Scholar, 454.