Fabrication of Empire: The British and the Uganda Kingdoms, 1890–1902 (review)

Anthony Low is arguably the most comprehensive British historian of the British Empire; he is certainly the doyen of British historians of East Africa. From 1951 to 1958 he taught at Makerere University College, Uganda; for a while he was Uganda correspondent for the London Times. After five years in Canberra he moved to the University of Sussex, where he took a leading part in setting up the School of African and Asian Studies. From 1973 to 1982 he was back in Canberra, where he became vice-chancellor of the Australian National University. Then followed a decade in Cambridge, England, as professor of the history of the British Commonwealth.

Low's first research, for an Oxford doctorate, concerned relations between the British and the Baganda up to 1900. His first major publication, in 1960, was a brilliant analysis of the negotiations that resulted in the Uganda Agreement in 1900. As a seminal investigation of African agency, it was comparable in importance to Terence Ranger's 1967 study of the 1896–97 rebellions in Rhodesia. Low drew on his thesis for chapters in the Oxford History of East Africa, and he also wrote on Uganda in the twentieth century; but then he turned his attention to politics in British India; and his Australian sojourns also gave him a perspective on Pacific history. Now, in retirement, Low has returned to his first field of study. His new book offers the "Fabrication of Empire" in Uganda as an exemplary episode in imperial as well as African history.

The overarching theme of Fabrication is the "forced amalgamation" of thirty-odd rulerships into five kingdoms: Buganda, Bunyoro, Toro, Ankole, and Busoga. To the specialist, this will be largely familiar territory, but Low has done much more than recycle his earlier research: he has kept abreast of the literature and pulled together much relevant work by Rowe, Twaddle, Wrigley, Medard, Reid, Karugire, and Steinhart. (He also lets us know that he interviewed President Museveni in 1993.) The main narratives are punctuated by schematic interludes (which may owe something to Low's association, since his days at Makerere, with political scientists). Low outlines four stages of "defining conjuncture": precursors (the factors bearing on British officials and Africans on first contact); the assertion of British hegemony; a "determining vortex" of resistance, revolt, and mutiny; and finally, colonial settlement. Drawing on a 1975 article of his own, Low shows how far "new model warbands"—characteristic of much of eastern Africa in the nineteenth century—shaped the polities that confronted the British: it was leaders of warbands who filled the offices of state in three of the five kingdoms. Low concludes by describing the visit to Britain in 1902 of the prime minister of Buganda, Apolo Kagwa. This was Kagwa's idea, but officialdom turned it to account by displaying British industrial and military might, as well as introducing the eminent visitor to high society: "Hegemony tempered by honour left awe greatly reinforced" (332).

I have two cavils. The armory of citation from the secondary literature is formidable, but there are chinks. Low might have modified his remarks on the East African ventures of Sir William Mackinnon had he consulted Forbes Munro's magisterial Maritime Enterprise and Empire (Boydell Press, 2003). And given the slippery nature, in this context, of two words, Uganda and protectorate, I was surprised to find no reference to an article of my own on this matter (Uganda Journal, 1963). More substantially, it must be admitted that Fabrication is often heavy going. I wearied of "eventuality"; there are several elephantine subordinate clauses, and infelicities which should have been smoothed away by a publisher's editor. In the copy sent for review, some pages are imperfectly printed.