Trace and Tell your Family's Empire Stories
Country Histories
Uganda is a fertile, land-locked country in the east of Africa. Before British influence in the late nineteenth century, Uganda was divided between a number of kingdoms and territories. The powerful southern kingdom of Buganda, remained influential under British rule and was developed at the expense of other territories.
Placed under the charter of the British East Africa Company in 1888, parts of Uganda were ruled as a protectorate from 1894. Known as the 'Pearl of Africa', Uganda became a highly profitable colony through the sale of cotton, coffee, tea, sugar and tobacco. However, deeply entrenched divisions in society, particularly between north and south, meant that the country was never truly united. Hatred, violence and human rights abuses persist to this day.
Browser by chapterA European Roman Catholic nun attends to an young African man suffering from leprosy on 'Rotten Row', the unfortunate name given to the area of St. Joseph's Mission where infectious and incurable diseases were treated. Talking to her patient as she works, she applies medicine and a bandage to his disfigured leg. Naggalama, Uganda, circa 1920. Copyright Images of Empire.
Stanley was so impressed by the apparent willingness of the Baganda to accept British ways that he attempted to convert kabaka Mutesa to Christianity. Under Mutesa the Baganda had been encouraged to adopt Islamic beliefs, but, threatened by the Egyptian advance into Bunyoro, Mutesa recognised the political advantage in welcoming the missions. Substantial numbers of Baganda were converted to Christianity, including members of the court.
Stanley persuaded the Church Missionary Society in London to send representatives to Buganda in 1877. They were followed by French Catholic White Fathers two years later. Mutesa tried to play the Protestant and Catholic groups off one another in order to balance the influence of the colonial powers that backed them. Religion and politics remained inextricably linked in Uganda in the years to come.
When Mutesa died in 1884 he was succeeded by his son, Mwanga II (1868-1903), who considered the foreign ideologies brought by the missionaries to be damaging Buganda. He began expelling the missionaries and forcing Christian converts to abandon their faith using torture and murder. Many missionaries and converts, both Catholic and Protestant, were killed at this time and have become known as the Martyrs of Uganda.
In an atmosphere of escalating violence, Christian and Muslim Baganda converts rebelled against Mwanga and he was briefly deposed in 1888. The Christian groups emerged as dominant, but Protestants and Catholics were divided, with the British backing the Protestants and German supporting the Catholics. German backing came from Karl Peters, whose German East Africa Company was establishing control over what would become the colony of Tanganyika.
Initially the Catholic group dominated, but the Protestants were armed with superior technology in the shape of prototype Maxim machine guns, supplied by Captain Frederick Lugard, a British colonial administrator in the service of the British East Africa Company. After a bloody confrontation the British government was forced to pay compensation to the French mission and the Germans were persuaded in 1890 to relinquish their claim to Ugandan territories in return for the North Sea territory of Heligoland.
