History History

Several sites bear witness to the very ancient presence of modern man in present-day Uganda. At Sango Bay, for example, artefacts (scrapers, scrapers, etc.) were unearthed in the 1920s, the oldest of which are thought to date from 150,000 BC. Nsongezi, on the Kagera River, has been occupied for tens of thousands of years and is one of the most extensively excavated sites in the country. Here, as in the Debasian Range (east), Later Stone Age microliths have been excavated.

Around 1000 BC, hunter-gatherers arrived from the Congolese basin. They could be the authors of all or part of the rock paintings of the Ugandan east (Nyero, Dolwe Island...). At the beginning of our era, they were joined by populations of the Bantu linguistic group who populated the banks of Lake Victoria. This period saw the development of agriculture and iron metallurgy.

Archaeological and historical research undertaken in the west (Mubende, Ntusi...) shows that the first structured political systems date back to the year 1000. The most famous of these is undoubtedly the kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara, which was successively ruled by the Tembuzi and Cwezi dynasties, half historical, half legendary. The expansion of the Luo, who came from southern Sudan in the 16th century, threatened the supremacy of this regime. The power of Bunyoro (80,000 km2 ), of its king (Omukama) and of its economy (based on the exploitation of iron deposits and salt mines in the Rwenzori) was, on the other hand, hardly threatened by the emergence, a few decades earlier, of two small kingdoms: Buganda and Ankole.

This two-century period was certainly marked by the blossoming of the Ankole and Toro kingdoms, but it was above all the rise of Buganda that punctuated it. Before 1650, this small kingdom (15,000 km2 ), characterized by its fertile agricultural land, lived in the shadow of its pre-eminent neighbour, Bunyoro. Although the Ganda (Kabaka) rulers never succeeded in conquering this kingdom, they did succeed in weakening it by (partially) taking control of the trade routes linking it to the Indian Ocean coast and by taking advantage of its succession disputes (especially during the decades of 1830 and 1840). As a result, Buganda eclipsed Bunyoro in terms of political and commercial power and reached its peak during the reign of Kabaka Suuna II (1832-1856).

During the 1850s, both in Buganda and in Bunyoro, where the new omukama, Kamurasi, triumphed over infighting, contacts with Arab and Swahili traders intensified. These traders, some of whom were well-connected, introduced Islam in 1846. In 1858, the explorer John Speke was the first European to set foot in the Buganda kingdom. He was followed in the following years and decades by other western adventurers such as James Grant, Samuel Baker and Henry Stanley.

Troubled times in Bunyoro. In 1869, after the death of the omukama Kamurasi, several princes competed for the throne. It was finally Kabalega who won. He inspired political and military reforms and held the British governors of the Sudanese province of Equatoria at bay (1871-1878), who wanted to take over his kingdom.

Arrival of Father Lourdel, the first Catholic missionary to set foot in Buganda. Protestant evangelists had already been active there for two years.

In 1884, Mutesa I, a Kabaka who had allowed Arab slave traders to settle in his capital, Mengo (Kampala), gave up. Like many Ganda notables, he had converted to Islam and, following British orders, had to accept the presence of Christian missionaries on his soil. Once enthroned, his son, Mwanga, was much more intransigent towards the latter. This policy sadly culminated on 3 June 1886 with the burning of Anglicans and Roman Catholics in Namugongo. Fuelled by Britain and France, religious strife reached its peak. Wearily, Mwanga sought (and received) German mediation in 1890.

In the early 1890s, an Anglo-German pact granted Kenya and Uganda to the Imperial British East Africa Company. Great Britain quickly managed to circumvent Mwanga who signed a protectorate agreement. The Union Jack was then hoisted over Kampala while Buganda troops were mobilized to bring the neighbouring kingdoms to heel.

Extension of the protectorate, after violent battles, to the Toro and Ankole kingdoms. Having lost the favour of the British, Mwanga was ousted and replaced by his son, Daudi Chwa II, aged one year. Two years later (1899), despite fierce resistance, Bunyoro was in turn subjugated and the omukama Kabalega relegated to the Seychelles.

Signature of the Buganda Agreement which unified the kingdoms. From then on, the protectorate, whose first governor was Sir Harry Johnston, took the name of Uganda. Its administration was mainly entrusted to the Baganda.

Rise of independence demands following the Second World War. The anti-colonial party UNC (Uganda National Congress) was founded in 1952. The DP (Democratic Party) and the UPU (Uganda People's Union), mainly supported by the populations of the north of the country, like the Acholi, followed. In 1960, the UNC and the UPU merged to form the Uganda People's Congress (UPC), led by Milton Obote.

Proclamation of the Independence of Uganda. Its first appointed President was Kabaka Mutesa II. The post of Prime Minister went to Milton Obote, who won the elections in April 1962.

Tensions between Mutesa II and Milton Obote, who was opposed to the political and economic domination of the Baganda, escalated in the mid-1960s. Anxious to abolish the kingdoms on which the federal state had been established, Obote - together with his chief of staff, Idi Amin Dada - drove Mutesa II out of his palace on 22 February 1966. About 2,000 Baganda in favour of the Kabaka-president (forced into exile in London) were massacred on that occasion. Nineteen months later, Obote succeeded in his aim as the new constitution made Uganda a centralized state. The new one-party presidential system, in which the army enjoyed significant prerogatives, promptly abolished the kingdoms, chief among them the hated Buganda.

On 25 January 1971, while Obote was attending a Commonwealth conference in Singapore, a military coup was orchestrated by Idi Amin Dada. This led to the establishment of a terrible dictatorial regime that resulted in the assassination of some 300,000 opponents, the expulsion of some 50,000 Indo-Pakistanis (accused of disloyalty, commercial fraud, etc.), the establishment of military tribunals and the State of Qatar), the establishment of military courts and the State Research Bureau, an intelligence agency that is a master of torture... Economically exhausted and gradually outlawed by the international community, Idi Amin Dada's Uganda also had to deal with an increasingly virulent opposition in exile. In order to curb the latter, the dictator declared war on Tanzania in 1978. This military campaign was a failure: in April 1979, the Ugandan opponents and the Tanzanian army took Kampala. Idi Amin found refuge in Libya, then in Saudi Arabia where he died on 16 August 2003.

On the verge of bankruptcy, Uganda saw Obote and the UPC return to power - after a transition period, the withdrawal of Tanzanian troops and rigged elections. Playing on ethnic rivalries and using coercive means against his political rivals (an estimated 100,000 civilians were massacred in almost a decade of power), Milton Obote was confronted with armed rebellions, including that undertaken by Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army (NRA) in the south of the country.

After the overthrow of Obote by General Tito Okello (27 July 1985), the way was clear for Museveni. Victorious in this disastrous civil war, or Bush War, he was brought to power on 29 January 1986.

Comfortably elected president in 1996, Museveni liberalized the economy, following the recommendations of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which encouraged foreign investment. In the same vein, he adopted a series of measures to encourage the return of Indo-Pakistanis. Against the backdrop of the economic take-off, Museveni re-established the kingdoms as 'cultural institutions' (Mutebi II was thus enthroned as Kabaka of Buganda). However, in the north he had to fight with the insurgents of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Internationally, his involvement in the overthrow of the Zairian president Mobutu is noteworthy.

This was a good period for Museveni, at the height of his international reputation: transition to a multi-party political system approved by referendum (28 July 2005), discovery of marketable hydrocarbon deposits in the Lake Albert basin, peace process with the LRA in order to end the civil war..

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