Description: This book is the first major study in several decades to consider Uganda as a nation, from its precolonial roots to the present day. Here, Richard J. Reid examines the political, economic, and social history of Uganda, providing a unique and wide-ranging examination of its turbulent and dynamic past for all those studying Uganda's place in African history and African politics. Reid identifies and examines key points of rupture and transition in Uganda's history, emphasising dramatic political and social change in the precolonial era, especially during the nineteenth century, and he also examines the continuing repercussions of these developments in the colonial and postcolonial periods. By considering the ways in which historical culture and consciousness has been ever present - in political discourse, art and literature, and social relationships - Reid defines the true extent of Uganda's viable national history.
Brief description: Richard J. Reid is Head of the Department of History and Professor of the History of Africa at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is the author of several books, including Frontiers of Violence in Northeast Africa (2011) and Warfare in African History (Cambridge, 2012).
Review Quotes: 'From Kintu the first man on earth and founder of the Buganda kingdom to Kiprotich the 2012 Olympic marathon winner, Reid constantly confronts past and present with a fine disregard for chronology to prove that a national history is possible for even the most divided of nations. Product of an unequal political geography centuries old and of a botched British decolonisation, ruined times over by military adventurers since, Uganda is nonetheless tied together by lively cultures of personal ambition, networks of social mobility, and artistic creativity. This is a tour de force, based as much on sharp-eyed fieldwork as on archival and bibliographic mastery.' John Lonsdale, Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge