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History »
THE HISTORY OF UGANDA
The country called Uganda came in existence when, “the announcement of its
creation and of its status as a British protectorate was published in the London
Gazette in 1894.” One of the interesting issues noted at the beginning of this
political entity called Uganda is that, “most of the people who lived in the
territory that was described to the world as Uganda had never heard of the
London Gazette, nor did a country called Uganda mean anything to them.” This
could possibly explain why they felt no allegiance to an imperial creation whose
borders cut across existing economic, political, and social relationships. We
come to recognize that the formation of Uganda was not a result of a gradual
process of national integration. Consequently this formation process of the
Ugandan state posed some challenges whose impact is still felt today. First, the
Uganda protectorate was a mixture of centralised kingdoms and segmentary states
brought together with no logic other than imperial needs. Politically there was
no unity, the sparsely populated regions in the north having little affinity
with the “privileged” Baganda peoples in the south. This problem, originated by
the British, has been probably the most difficult nettle of all to grasp, not
only for the British in building up a nation-state of Uganda, but for successive
independent governments to date. The second challenge arising from the
artificial creation of Uganda has been an ethnic one. In a population of some
24.4 million, around three-fifths of the people, those living South and West of
the Nile plus certain groups in Eastern Uganda, are Bantu-speaking. By contrast,
those living in the Northern region are Nilotic, namely the Acholi and Langi;
the Lugbara of West Nile District are Sudanic-speaking; the Iteso and the
Karimojong in Eastern Region are Nilo-Hamitic. This North-South division
ethnically, linguistically and culturally exists and shows itself, arising in
political, economic or social clashes. But despite this apparent gloomy picture
which characterised the formation of the state of Uganda, the identity of the
nation has taken shape and there is a developed consciousness for the people to
identify as Ugandans.
Uganda’s strategic position along the central African Rift Valley, its
favourable climate at an altitude of 1,200 meters and above, and the reliable
rainfall around the Lake Victoria Basin made it attractive to African
cultivators and herders as early as the 4th century BC. Core samples from the
bottom of Lake Victoria have revealed that dense rainforest once covered the
land around the lake. Centuries of cultivation removed almost all the original
tree cover.
The cultivators who gradually cleared the forest were probably Bantu speaking
people, whose slow but inexorable expansion gradually took over most of Africa
south of the Sahara Desert. Their knowledge of agriculture and use of iron
forging technology permitted them to clear the land and feed ever larger numbers
of settlers. They displaced small bands of indigenous hunter-gatherers, who
relocated to the less accessible mountains. Meanwhile, by the 4th century BC,
the Bantu-speaking metallurgists were perfecting iron smelting to produce medium
grade carbon steel in pre-heated forced draft furnaces--a technique not achieved
in Europe until the Siemens process of the 19th century. Although most of these
developments were taking place southwest of modern Ugandan boundaries, iron was
mined and smelted in many parts of the country not long afterward. |
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