technical and higher education is provided. In 1909–1910 there were in the Anglican schools over 36,000 scholars, of whom 17,000 were girls. Of the total number of scholars over 26,000 were in the kingdom of Buganda. The Roman Catholic schools had in 1909 over 11,000 scholars. (See the Col. Off. Report on Uganda, No. 686.)
The expenditure for 1902–1903 was fixed at £210,000, of which about £170,000 was furnished by an imperial grant-in-aid and the balance from local revenue. Between 1903 and 1909 the revenue increased from £51,000 to £102,000. Revenue is chiefly derived from hut and poll taxes, customs, wharfage dues, game licences and land tax.Expenditure and Revenue. The hut and poll taxes yield about £62,000 a year. The expenditure increased from £186,000 in 1903 to £256,000 in 1909. Denciencies are made good by parliamentary grants. The rupee (1s. 4d.) is the standard coin, with a subsidiary decimal coinage.
History.—The countries grouped under this protectorate were invaded at some relatively remote period-say, three to four thousand years ago-by Hamitic races from the north-east (akin to the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians, Gallas, Somalis), who mingled extensively with the Nile negroes first, and then with the aboriginal inhabitants of Buganda, Unyoro and Nandi. These Hamites brought with them a measure of Egyptian civilization, cattle, and the arts of metallurgy, pottery and other adjuncts to neolithic civilization. There was probably no direct intercourse with Egypt by way of the Nile, owing to the lake-like marshes between Bor and Fashoda, but instead an overland traffic with Ethiopia (the Land of Punt) via Mt Elgon and the Rudolf regions. In time even this intercourse with the non-negro world died away, and powerful kingdoms with an aristocracy of Galla. descent grew up in Buganda, Unyoro and Ankole.
The kingdom of Buganda especially dominated the lands of Victoria Nyanza in the 19th century. In the ’forties and ’fifties Egyptian officials, Austrian missionaries, and British, Dutch, Italian, and German explorers had carried our knowledge of the Nile beyond Khartum as far south as Gondokoro. In the same period of time the Zanzibar Arab traders were advancing from the south on the Bahima kingdoms of the western Victoria Nyanza and on Buganda. King Suna of Buganda first heard of the outer world of white men in 1850 from a runaway Baluch soldier of Zanzibar. Captains Burton and Speke, on their Tanganyika expedition, heard of Buganda from the Arab traders in 1857. Captain Speke in 1862 reached Buganda, the first of all Europeans to enter that country. In the early 'seventies Sir Samuel Baker (who had discovered Albert Nyanza) extended the rule of the Egyptian Sudan as far south as the Victoria Nile. General Gordon, who succeeded Baker, and who had Dr Emin Bey (afterwards Emin Pasha) as lieutenant, attempted through Colonel Charles Chaillé Long, in 1874, not only to annex Unyoro but also Buganda to the Egyptian dominions, and thoroughly established Egyptian control on Albert Nyanza. But owing to the indirect influence of the British government, exercised through Sir John Kirk at Zanzibar, the Egyptian dominions were prevented from coming south of the Victoria Nile.
Suna, the powerful king or emperor of Buganda, who was the first to hear of a world beyond Negroland, had been succeeded in 1857 by his still more celebrated son, Mutesa (Mutesa means the measurer). Mutesa had received Speke and Grant in a most friendly manner. Subsequent to their departure he had opened up relations with the British agent at Zanzibar. In 1875 he received an epoch-making visit from Sir H. M. Stanley. Stanley, in response to Mutesa’s questions about religion, obtained from that king an invitation to Anglican missionaries, which he transmitted to London through the Daily Telegraph.[1] Having made the first survey of Victoria Nyanza and confirmed Speke’s guesses as to its shape and area, Stanley passed on (half discovering Ruwenzori on the way) to the Congo.
Meanwhile the Zanzibar Arabs had reached Buganda in ever increasing numbers as traders; but many of them were earnest propagandists of Islam, and strove hard (with some success) to convert to that religion the king and chiefs of Buganda and adjoining countries. In 1877 the Rev. C. T. Wilson, one of a party of missionaries sent in answer to Stanley’s appeal by the Church Missionary Society of England, arrived in Uganda, and towards the end of 1878 was joinedChristian Missions, 1877–1879. by Alexander Mackay. In 1879 another party arrived by the Nile route; and Wilson, after thirteen months’ actual residence, left for England with Dr R. W. Felkin, who had arrived only three months before, taking with him envoys from Mutesa. In the same year the French Roman Catholic mission of the White Fathers of Algeria was inaugurated, and thus from 1879 dates the triangular rivalry of the creeds of Anglican and Roman Christianity and of Islam.
In 1882 Islam gained an ascendancy, and the French withdrew for a time. In the autumn of 1884 Mutesa died. A great change had been wrought in Uganda during the latter years of his reign. Calico, fire-arms and swords had replaced the primitive bark-cloth and spear, while under the teaching of the missionary-engineerMutesa succeeded by Mwanga, 1884. Mackay the native artisans had learnt to repair arms and use European tools. Mutesa was a clever man of restless energy, but regardless of human life and suffering, and consumed by vanity. He was succeeded by Mwanga, a cruel, weak and vicious youth. The intrigues of the Arabs led him to suspect the designs of the missionaries; He was alarmed at their influence over numbers of his people and resolved to stamp out Christianity.
In the early ’eighties the aspirations of several European powers turned towards Africa as a field for commercial and colonial expansion. The restless Arabs of Zanzibar had since 1857 steadily advanced Zanzibar influence to Tanganyika, Nyasa, and even through the Masai countries to the north-east coast of Victoria Nyanza and the “back door” of Uganda. In 1882 the Royal Geographical Society dispatched Joseph Thomson to discover through Masailand the direct route to Victoria Nyanza. Thomson succeeded (he also discovered Lake Baringo and Mt Elgon), but turned back from the frontier of Busoga in order not to provoke Mutesa to hostilities. Mr H. H. Johnston was dispatched on a scientific mission to Kilimanjaro, and concluded treaties on which the British East Africa Company was subsequently based. The vague stir of these- movements had perturbed Mutesa, and they were regarded with deep suspicion by his successor, Mwanga.
The annexations of Emin on Albert Nyanza, the visit of Thomson to the closed door of Busoga, the opposition of the Europeans to the slave trade, and, lastly, the identification of the missionaries with political embassies and their letters of introduction from secular authorities, added to Mwanga's fears, and early in 1885, simultaneously with the return of the French Fathers, the long smouldering hostility broke out, and the Christian converts were seized and burnt at the stake. Bishop Hannington, who attempted to enter BugandaMurder of Bishop Hannington. 1885. by the forbidden route from the east, was murdered, and the Rev. R. P. Ashe and Mackay only redeemed lives by presents. The Buganda Christians showed heroism, and in spite of tortures and death the religion spread rapidly. Mwanga now determined to rid himself of Christians and Mahommedans alike by inducing them to proceed to an island in the lake, where he meant to leave them to starve. The plot was discovered, and Mwanga fled to the south of the lake, and Kiwewa, his eldest brother, was made king. The chiefs of the rival creeds—British (Anglicans), French (Catholics), and Ba-Islamu, as they were called-divided the chief ships. The Mahommedans now formed a plot to oust the Christians, and treacherously massacred a number of their chiefs and then defeated their unprepared adherents. Kiwewa, refusing to submit to circumcision, was (afterReligious Feuds. reigning three or four months) expelled by the Ba-Islamu, who placed another brother, Kalema, on the throne and began a fanatical propaganda, forcing the peasantry to submit to the hated circumcision. The British and French
- ↑ The letter was entrusted to Linant de Bellefonds, a Belgian in the Egyptian service, who had been sent to Buganda by Gordon. On his return journey Bellefonds was murdered by the Bari. When his body was recovered Stanley's letter was found concealed in one of his boots and was forwarded to England.
