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Bunyoro: An African Feudality?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

J. H. M. Beattie
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Extract

In terms of Marc Bloch's celebrated definition, the traditional interlacustrine Bantu kingdom of Bunyoro, in western Uganda, is ‘feudal’ in some respects but not in others. This is shown by a survey of Bunyoro's traditional political institutions, some of which tended to decentralize, others to centralize, political power and authority. Of the first, the most important were the considerable degree of independence enjoyed by the chiefs, and the largely self-sufficient community relationships of neighbourhood and kinship. Of the centripetal institutions, some linked the people to the kingship, others bound the chiefs to the king. Examples of both types are described. It is concluded that although traditional Bunyoro shared some features with European ‘feudal’ states, it also differed from them in important respects. Thus it would be misleading to refer to it, without a good deal of qualification, as a ‘feudality’.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 1964 , pp. 25 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1964

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References

1 Goody, Jack, ‘Feudalism in Africa?’, Journal of African History, iv, i (1963), 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 I carried out fieldwork in Bunyoro in 1951–1953, and again in 1955, mostly under the auspices of the Treasury Committee for Studentships in Foreign Languages and Cultures, whose support I gratefully acknowledge.Google Scholar

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12 Roscoe lists ten, without specifying the period to which he is referring (Roscoe, John, The Bakitara or Banyoro, Cambridge (1923), 53).Google Scholar The present Mukama of Bunyoro listed twenty-eight counties as having been ‘arranged’ by his father, Mukama Kabarega, during the second half of the last century (K. W., ‘The Kings of Bunyoro-Kitara; Part III’, Uganda Journal, V, 2 (1937), 67), but many of these, are outside the present boundaries of the kingdom.Google Scholar

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