ABSTRACT
In 1886 some fifty or so young Baganda were put to death by their ruler, the Kabaka of Buganda, and numbers of others were cut down in the highways and byways around his capital. The majority were Christian converts who had refused to renounce their new-found faith. The first Christian missionaries had arrived in Buganda in 1877–79. How it that there were Christian was converts in Buganda, let alone Christian martyrs, within such a relatively short time of their arrival? The Kabaka did not there and then become a Christian, any more than he had in the end become a circumcized Muslim; no wise Kabaka would jump so rapidly to such conclusions. As the confusion increased, the Kabaka himself did nothing to resolve it, but made it all very much worse by swinging in every possible direction in swift and bewildering succession.
