Military History of Uganda - Pre-colonial Uganda

Pre-colonial Uganda

The region now known as Uganda is divided linguistically by Lake Kyoga into a Bantu south and Nilotic north. The pastoralist Nilotes of the north were organized by lineage into small clans. While cattle raiding was practiced extensively, the highly decentralized nature of northern societies precluded the possibility of large-scale warfare. By comparison, the introduction of plantain as a staple crop in the south around 1000 AD permitted dense populations to form in the area north of Lake Victoria. One of the early powerful states to emerge was Bunyoro. However, chronic weakness within the structure of Bunyoro resulted in a continual series of civil wars and royal succession disputes. According to legend, a refugee from a Bunyoro conflict, Kimera, became Kabaka of the contemporaneous kingdom of Buganda, on the shores of Lake Victoria.

Bagandan governance was based on a stable succession arrangement, allowing the kingdom to more than double in size by the mid-nineteenth century through a series of wars of expansion, becoming the dominant power in the region. As well as a force of infantry, Baganda also maintained a navy of large outrigger canoes, which allowed Baganda commandos to raid any shore on Lake Victoria. Henry Morton Stanley visited in 1875 and reported viewing a military expedition of 125,000 troops marching east, where they were to join an auxiliary naval force of 230 canoes.

Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Uganda began to lose its isolated status, mainly due to traders seeking new sources of ivory after the decimation of elephant herds along the coast. Arab traders from the coast began making trade agreements with the Kabaka of Uganda to provide guns and other items in exchange for a supply of ivory. In the north, Turkish Sudan under Khedive Isma'il Pasha sought to expand its control of the White Nile. In 1869, the khedive sent a force under British explorer Samuel Baker to establish dominion over the upper Nile. Encountering stiff resistance, Baker was forced to turn back after burning the Bunyoro capital to the ground.

Foreign influences led to the eventual disruption of royal rule in Buganda. In 1877, the London-based Church Missionary Society sent Protestant missionaries, followed two years later by Catholic France-based White Fathers. The competition for converts in the royal court also included Zanzibar-based Muslim traders. When the new kabaka Mwanga II attempted to outlaw the divisive foreign ideologies (see Uganda Martyrs), he was deposed by armed converts in 1888. A four-year civil war erupted in which the Muslim forces initially declared victory, but were eventually defeated by an alliance of Christian groups. The conclusion of the civil war was also marked by various epidemics of foreign diseases, which halved the population in some localities and further weakened Baganda. The arrival of European colonial interests, in the persons of British captain Frederick Lugard and German Karl Peters, broke the Christian alliance. Protestant missionaries moved to put Uganda under British control, while French Catholics either supported the German claim or urged national independence. In 1892, fighting broke out between the two factions. Momentum remained with the Catholics until Lugard brought Maxim guns into play, resulting in the French Catholic mission being burnt to the ground and the Catholic bishop fleeing. With the support of Protestant Buganda chiefs secured, the British declared a protectorate in 1894 and began expanding its borders with the help of Nubian mercenaries formerly in the employ of the Egyptian khedive.