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