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On Ganda Historiography*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Michael Twaddle
Michael Twaddle*
Affiliation:
University of London
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Extract

“And so,” commented Goody and Watt in their celebrated discussion of the consequences of literacy,

not long after the widespread diffusion of writing throughout the Greek world, and the recording of the previously oral cultural tradition, there arose an attitude to the past very different from that common in non-literate societies. Instead of the unobtrusive adaptation of past traditions to present needs, a great many individuals found in the written records, where much of their traditional cultural repertoire had been given permanent form, so many inconsistencies in the beliefs and categories of understanding handed down to them that they were impelled to a much more conscious, comparative, and critical attitude to the accepted world picture, and notably to the notions of God, the universe and the past.

However applicable these remarks may be to classical Greece, they are not applicable to colonial Buganda without considerable emendation. This paper attempts to suggest why this is so, paying particular attention to the development of indigenous historical writing. It is therefore more narrow in analytical focus than Rowe's recent survey of historical writings in Luganda. On the other hand, it is somewhat broader in intent than Kiwanuka's introduction to his translation into English of the early part of Apolo Kagwa's Ekitabo kya Basekabaka be Buganda, the only other substantive study in this field.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 1 , 1974 , pp. 85 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1974

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Footnotes

*

This paper was first presented at a seminar in the Department of Anthropology, University College, London, chaired by Edward Shils and M.G. Smith. I am indebted for further comments to David Cohen and C.C. Wrigley.

References

Notes

1. Goody, J. and Watt, I., “The Consequences of Literacy,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 5 (1963), p. 325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Rowe, J.A., “Myth, Memoir and Moral Admonition: Luganda Historical Writing, 1893-1969,” UJ, 33 (1969), pp. 17-40, 217–9.Google Scholar

3. Kiwanuka, M.S.M., ed. and trans., The Kings of Buganda (Nairobi, 1971).Google Scholar

4. Low, D.A., Religion and Society in Buganda, 1875-1900 (Kampala [1957]), p. 9Google Scholar; Wrigley, C.C., “The Christian Revolution in Buganda,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2 (1959), pp. 33–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Rowe, J.A., “The Baganda Revolutionaries,” Tarikh, 3/2 (1970), pp. 34–46Google Scholar; Wright, M., Buganda in the Heroic Age (Nairobi, 1971), p. 55Google Scholar; Twaddle, M., “The Muslim Revolution in Buganda,' Afrocam Affairs, 71 (1972), pp. 54–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Low, D.A. and Pratt, R.C., Buganda and British Overrule: Two Studies (London, 1960), pp. 137–59.Google Scholar

7. Wilson, C.T. and Felkin, R.W., Uganda and the Egyptian Soudan, 2 vols. (London, 1882), 2:19.Google Scholar

8. Oliver, R., The Missionary Factor in East Africa (London, 1952), pp. 73–8.Google Scholar

9. Ashe, R.P., Chronicles of Uganda (London, 1894), p. 307.Google Scholar

10. Rowe, , “Myth, Memoir and Moral Admonition,” p. 29.Google Scholar

11. Ibid., pp. 21–2; Kiwanuka, , Kings of Buganda, pp. xxiv–xxv.Google Scholar

12. Crabtree, W.A. reviewing Roscoe, J., The Baganda (London, 1911) in Man (1914), p. 47.Google Scholar

13. Twaddle, “Muslim Revolution.”

14. Kiwanuka, , Kings of Buganda, p. xxx.Google Scholar

15. Twaddle, M., “The Bakungu Chiefs of Buganda under British Colonial Rule, 1900-1930,” JAH, 10 (1969), pp. 316–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. Ibid., p. 319.

17. Ibid., p. 315; Wrigley, C.C., “The Changing Economic Structure of Buganda,” in Fallers, L.A., ed., The King's Men (London, 1964), pp. 16–63.Google Scholar

18. Cf. Low, D.A., The Mind of Buganda (London, 1971), pp. 62–70.Google Scholar

19. Southwold, M., “Was the Kingdom Sacred?” Mawazo (1967), p. 18.Google Scholar

20. Richards, A.I., “Authority Patterns in Traditional Buganda,” in Fallers, , The King's Men, pp. 286–7.Google Scholar

21. Ibid., passim; Southwold, M., Bureaucracy and Chiefship in Buganda (Kampala, 1961)Google Scholar; Low, D.A., Buganda in Modern History (London, 1971).Google Scholar

22. Mair, L., An African People in the Twentieth Century (London, 1934), p. 198.Google Scholar

23. Southwold, , “Was the Kingdom Sacred?”, p. 22.Google Scholar

24. Oliver, R., “The Traditional Histories of Buganda, Bunyoro, and Ankole,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 85 (1955), pp. 111–7.Google Scholar

25. Kiwanuka, , Kings of Buganda, p. xxii.Google Scholar

26. Southwold, M., “The History of a History: Royal Succession in Buganda,” in Lewis, I.M., ed., History and Social Anthropology (London, 1968), p. 132.Google Scholar

27. Cf. d'Hertefelt, M., Les Clans du Rwanda ancien (Tervuren, 1971).Google Scholar

28. Cf. Oliver, R., “The Royal Tombs of Buganda,” UJ, 23 (1959), pp. 124–33.Google Scholar

29. Kagwa, Apolo, Basekabaka be Buganda (Kampala, 1927).Google Scholar The quote is from the English translation by Kiwanuka, , Kings of Buganda, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

30. Kagwa, Basekabaka; again trans. Kiwanuka, , Kings of Buganda, p. 5.Google Scholar

31. Sabalangiia, J.T.K. G[omotoka], Munno (1920), pp. 121–2.Google Scholar

32. Bitawera, A. to Gomotoka, , Munno, 5 August 1920, p. 131.Google Scholar

33. Gomotoka, to Bitawera, , “A Reply,” Munno, 5 August 1920, pp. 131–2.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., pp. 150–1.

35. See above, note 1.

36. Pagés, A., Un Royaume hamite au centre de l'Afrique (Brussels, 1933)Google Scholar; Kagame, A., La Poésie dynastique au Rwanda (Brussels, 1951)Google Scholar; idem, La Notion de génération appliquée à la généalogie dynastique et à l'histoire du Rwanda des Xe-XIe siècles à nos Jours (Brussels, 1959); Vansina, J., L'Évolution du royaume Rwanda dès origines à 1900 (Brussels, 1962).Google Scholar

37. See, for example, Oliver, “Royal Tombs of Buganda”; Southwold, “History of a History”; idem, “Succession to the Throne in Buganda,” in J. Goody, ed., Succession to High Office (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 82-126.

38. d'Hertefelt, Clans du Rwanda ancien.

39. For example, Nsimbi, M.B., A mannya A maganda n'Ennono Zaago (Kampala, 1956), p. 150.Google Scholar

40. Rowe, “Myth, Memoir and Moral Admonition.”

41. Gough, K., “Implications of Literacy in Traditional China and India,” in Goody, J., ed., Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1968), p. 82.Google Scholar