HISTORIOGRAPHY

PRE-COLONIAL

COLONIAL

POST-COLONIAL

Oral tradition

Dominated by missionaries

first large literate group

interested in documentation

missionary society gets more academic credibility

justify presence

integrated

bias

Nyoro

less divided - no civil war, less religious factors, less ethincally divided, oppression unites

focused on lost counties - legitimise

focus on mistreatment

focus on competition between Bunyoro and Buganda

use history to demonstrate pre-eminence

use history to justify claims

Buganda

Want to consolidate/justify/maintain superior position e.g. Kagwa

More divisive - more internal losers and religious/ethnic division

60s 70s

Lots of work framed in national or nationalist terms

new nations - gravity and legitimacy of past

80s

More micro-studies of themes/regions

history from below

Speke laid foundations - provided first written king list

30s

old generation want to establish place

Decades of upheaval and crisis - reflect on past

Rise of literacy - good way to affirm views - gives legitimacy/permanence by writing down

stayed a pretty elite form of expression

extension of rich oral culture

came to be viewed as sort of scriptures, associated w essential truth

written by political and cultural leaders w agendas but were also historians

writing was the result and cause of political dominance

placed Buganda at centre of history of region

but didnt go uncontested - debates in newspaper, journals etc

wrote with an eye on the present

50s-60s

became professional discipline

anthropologists, political scientists

'golden age' great body of work produced that assisted understanding

African historians

History of Uganda Project at Makere University

helped to conceive of Uganda as a nation

71 Idi Amin's coup ended golden age

next 2 decades historical research in Uganda was impossible - scholars fled

late 80s scholarship now possible again

90s-now

past few years - explosion of writing

new topics e.g. spiritualism, gender, health

similarly to 30s ageing generation seeks to write its place into history

most work today undertaken by foreign scholars

history is under-funded and not well thought of in Uganda

focus on STEM and progress

not a lot of work on the concept of nation

40s-50s

emergin Muslim historiography as school attendance and opportunities increased

focus on religion and morality

focus on court

Roscoe's ethnography = groundbreaking

Twaddle - introduces concept of studying slavery

challenge of dominant ideas

e.g. Summers and Budo

migrated archives

Tony Low - v positive view of colonial rule, focus on Buganda and British - criticsed for positivity and narrowness

sociology - focus on aspects of state that are significant or interesting to them

Kiwanuka - nationalist school of 60s, anti-Bunyoro, anti-colonial

the Customs of the Baganda = key text

Twaddle - counter-narrative difficult due to dispersion of Muslims and focus of Catholics on martyrdoms

dom. by Prot Elites

Museveni says too much focus on dark past + divisions

control past = reduce dissidents

results in unusually rich indigenous historiography - re-fight old wars

Miti constructs counter-history

writes in Luganda - translation issues

shaped historical debate for generations, summarised oral traditions. selective in content