{UAH} BEFORE WE BECAME NAMED UGANDA, WE WERE SOLD, TOGETHER WITH KENYA AT £250,000

Uganda, on the equator and surrounded by the great lakes of East and central Africa, is one of the last parts of the continent to be reached by outsiders. Arab traders in search for slaves and ivory arrived in the 1840s, soon followed by two British explorers; John Speke and Henry Murton Stanley in 1862 and 1875 respectively.

Kabaka Mutesa of Buganda was the only King ever visited by both Speke and Stanley. His kingdom was one of the four in the region which became firmly established by the mid-nineteenth century. The others, lying to the west, were Ankole ( currently inexistent), Tooro, Bunyoro and Busoga.

The existence of these African kingdoms had a profound influence on the development of Uganda during the colonial period. But when the scramble for Africa began in the 1880s, this remote interior region was not immediately in the sights of any of the colonial predators.

It was seen at the time merely as a distant place lying beyond the territories of the sultan of Zanzibar, which were in dispute between Britain and Germany. When separate spheres of interest were agreed upon in the scramble and partition of Africa at the Berlin conference in 1886, the area of modern Kenya fell to Britain.

British East Africa Company: 1888-1895

As with the areas colonized by Rhodes at that same period in southern Africa, the British government was reluctant to take active responsibility for the region of East Africa which was then its acknowledged sphere of interest. Instead, it assigned a commercial company the right to administer and develop the territory. The Imperial British East Africa Company was set up for the purpose in 1888, a year ahead of Rhodes's British South Africa Company.

The region given into the company's care stretched all the way from the east coast to the kingdom of Buganda, on the northwest shore of Lake Victoria.

It was evident to all that the development of this region depended on the construction of a railway from the coast to Lake Victoria, but circumstances conspired to make this task far beyond the abilities of the East Africa Company. The running sore which sapped their energy and their funds was Buganda.

Being in a sense beyond Lake Victoria, Germany was able to argue that this region (the most powerful kingdom within the territory of Uganda) was not covered by the territorial agreement with Britain. Moreover, the irrepressible Karl Peters then forced the issue. In 1890 he arrived at Kampala and persuaded the kabaka (the king of Buganda) to sign a treaty accepting a German protectorate over his kingdom.

A possibly dangerous confrontation between the imperial powers was averted when the British prime minister, Lord Salisbury, proposed a deal which Berlin, remarkably accepted. Salisbury offered the tiny and apparently useless island of Heligoland (in British possession since 1814) in return for German recognition of British protectorates in Zanzibar, Uganda and Equatoria (the southern province of Sudan). But Germany derived her own benefit from the deal. Heligoland subsequently proved an invaluable naval base in two world wars.

RELIGIOUS WAR IN BUGANDA

Meanwhile, the East Africa Company faced further problems in Buganda, where civil war broke out between factions led by British Protestant missionaries and their French Catholic rivals.

In January 1892, there was heavy gunfire between and among the four hills which formed Kampala. On the top of one hill was the palace of the kabaka. On another the French had completed a Catholic cathedral of wooden poles and reeds. On the third, the Protestants were building their church. On the fourth, was the fort established for the company by Frederick Lugard who was the only combatant with the advantage of a Maxim machine gun.

Lugard prevailed. But the loss of life and destruction of property in this unseemly European squabble made it plain that the East Africa Company was incapable of fulfilling its duties.

In 1894, the British government declared a protectorate over Buganda. Two years later, British control was extended to cover the western kingdoms of Ankole, Toro and Bunyoro - to form, together with Buganda, the Uganda Protectorate.

IBEACO GIVEN £250,000 as compensation

Meanwhile, the much larger region of Kenya had been relatively calm even if the East Africa Company had achieved little of value there. But in taking responsibility for Uganda, the British government needed to be sure of the new protectorate's access to the sea. So in 1895, the company's charter was revoked (with compensation of £250,000). Kenya became another new responsibility of the British government, as the East Africa Protectorate.

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"When a man is stung by a bee, he doesn't set off to destroy all beehives"

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