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Bunyoro and the British: A Reappraisal of the Causes for the Decline and Fall of an African Kingdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

M. S. M. Kiwanuka
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Extract

The problem raised in this paper is fundamentally that of the value of oral traditions used as historical sources. There is a tendency to accept them uncritically and thereby to perpetuate myths which a little critical investigation would have ended years before. The present writer has attempted to demonstrate that a historian dealing with traditional history must widen his field far beyond the oral traditions which are of immediate interest to him. Like other sources, comparisons with and the cross-checking of the traditions of other countries are essential factors in reconstructing the pre-colonial history of Africa. The results of such an exercise have been shown in this paper, the main purpose of which has been to trace and reassess the causes for the decline and fall of Bunyoro, by using not only the oral traditions of Bunyoro, as has been the practice hitherto, but also those of her neighbours such as Ankole, Buganda, Busoga, Kiziba and Ruanda. The results have shown that the effects of succession wars were less disastrous than is often believed. But the economic and territorial Josses, coupled with the persistent lack of able leadership, were more important than the so-called federalism of the Babito. For a semipastoralist population, cattle plagues may have been as disastrous as other factors. The British no doubt played a role, but it deserves less emphasis than it has hitherto received. By the time of their arrival Bunyoro had declined almost beyond recovery, and it is doubtful whether Kabarega could even have retained Toro. The British treatment of Bunyoro and Kabarega was typical of the reactions of colonial regimes against African resisters. Some of the questions raised in the concluding paragraphs regarding the possible future of Bunyoro had not the British intervened are perhaps too speculative. Nevertheless, they are worth asking, if the history of Bunyoro is to be seen in the right perspective.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , October 1968 , pp. 603 - 619
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

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References

1 Bunyoro is the country, Runyoro is the language, Kinyoro is the adjectival form (Nyoro-ish) and Mu-(s) Ba-(pl) Nyoro are the people. The first detailed record of the traditional history of Bunyoro was made by Mrs Fisher, A. B., Twilight Tales of the Black Baganda (London, 1923),Google Scholar by the Rev Roscoe, J., The Bakitara (London, 1923),Google Scholar by Bishop, Gorju, Entre le Victoria, l'Albert et l'Edouard (Rennes, 1920);Google Scholar these were followed by Bikunya's, P.Ky'Abakama ba Bunyoro (London, 1927), the accounts of K.W., the present Mukama (king) of Bunyoro, in the Uganda Journal of 1935, 1936–7,Google Scholar and by Nyakatura, J. W., Abakama ba Bunyoro Kitara (St Justin, Canada, 1947), 1–304; similar studies have followed, but they all use the above as their primary soures.Google Scholar

2 See Basil, Davidson, Black Mother (London, 1963), 131–2. Mr Davidson quotes Father Girolamo de Montesarchio, who spoke of a pitched battle between the Lord of Savo and a rebel army numbering many thousands in which only forty casualties had occurred.Google Scholar

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23 The wars of this period in Buganda are a very familiar subject, and we can only deal with them lightly here. See Perham, M., Lugard, The Years of Adventure, 1858–1898, I (London, 1956).Google Scholar

24 According to Dunbar (op. cit. 84), the reason why Kabarega did not seize this opportunity for allying himself with the Muslim Baganda was that all Baganda, ‘whether pagan or otherwise, were the sworn enemies of the Banyoro’.

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31 See Dunbar, A. R., ‘The British and Bunyoro–Kitara, 1891–1899’, Uganda J. xxiv, no. 2 (1960), 229–41. Before the colonial period, many of the Bahaya groups in the northwest of modern Tanzania were fully fledged kingdoms, though small. See J. Césard, loc. cit., and J. Ford and R. de Z. Hall, loc. cit.Google Scholar

32 The Kenya–Somali Border dispute is one of the numerous examples—see Castagno, A. A., ‘The Somali–Kenyan controversy,’ Journal of Modern African Studies, II, no. 2 (1964), 165–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In the same issue of the journal, see also Mesfin, Wolde Mariam, ‘The background of the Ethio-Somalian boundary dispute’, 189–219.Google Scholar

33 An interesting accountof British violence is contained in Low's, D. A. chapter ‘Uganda: the establishment of the protectorate, 1894–1919’, in History of East Africa, vol. II, ed. Harlow, and Chilver, (London, 1965), 57–123.Google Scholar On the Kenya coast the Mazrui family, which had ruled for many generations, was smashed, and this meant the end of Arab dominance in that region. For an interesting account of the British military activities against the African resisters in modem Kenya, see Mungeam, G. H., British Rule in Kenya, 1895–1912 (London, 1966).Google Scholar

34 A company of 6,000 Sudanese soldiers, two Hotchkiss and three maxim guns.

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45 Karagwe, for instance. Ford and Hall have pointed out that cattle epizootics during the late nineteenth century played a decisive role in ruining these semi-pastoral kingdoms.