ABSTRACT
Uganda as a territorial unit consisting of 93,981 square miles of land and water in the heart of Africa, its southern boundary cuting slantwise across the Equator and its south-western provinces divided from the north and east by the upper waters of the Nile, is the creation of the last eighty years. On first setting foot in Uganda in 1862 John Hanning Speke, soldier, geographer and explorer, might have been inclined to believe some of those stories of a golden age. For, having left behind the tribes to the south of Lake Victoria harassed by slavers and enslaved by superstition, he was filled with delight at the ‘quiescent beauty’ and apparent orderliness of southern Uganda. The rulers of Buganda, themselves offshoots of the ruling house of Bunyoro, had been faced with a more serious administrative problem than was the senior branch of their family.
