Political Power in Pre-colonial Buganda: Economy, Society and Warfare in the 19th Century(Eastern African Studies)

This study tells the story of Buganda's society, economy and culture. Buganda was one of the most favoured of East Africa's inter-lacustrine kingdoms. Blessed with fertile and well-watered soil, capable of supporting a relatively dense population, it became a major regional power by the mid-19th century. North America: Ohio U Press; Uganda: Fountain Publishers

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Land and livelihood: a survey of Ganda economy I - land and cultivation; a survey of Ganda economy II - herdsmen and hunters; a survey of Ganda economy III - crafts and craftsmen. Part 2 Labour and liberty: the state and its human resources I -labour and taxation; the state and its human resources II -slavery. Part 3 Buyers and sellers: developments in commerce I -domestic and regional trade; developments in commerce II - the growth of long-distance trade. Part 4 War and peace: war and peace I - the rise and decline of Ganda military power; war and peace II - developments in organization, tactics and weaponry; Lake Victoria - the final frontier.

Review :
Reid's new book on the material and military bases of political power in nineteenth century Buganda - especially post-1850 - is a welcome, ambitious and innovative break from this norm. ...This is an impressive study. Reid marshals a wealth of evidence and original argument on material conditions in late nineteenth-century Buganda, and the ways that those conditions shaped the nature and workings of the Ganda state. Even when he is not persuasive...Reid asks important questions and provides bold answers. His book breaks new ground that advances not only the study of precolonial Buganda, but also of precolonial Ugandan and East African History more generally. This is an impressive study, asking important questions and marshalling a wealth of evidence and original argument to provide bold (and mostly convincing) answers. Richard Reid's well-researched study places nineteenth-century Buganda in its economic and material contexts...Reid's study broadens our picture of precolonial Buganda beyond court politics and political structures and is thus a very welcome addition to the historiography. It is also valuable for the clan history he adds and for the analysis of Bugandan slavery and slave trade in the context of recent slave trade historiography. In writing an economic history of pre-colonial Buganda, Richard Reid has taken a simple idea, and in a field with relatively limited archival and historical resources, pursued it adeptly...this unfashionably detailed economic history provides an important and accessible synthesis of existing scholarship, together with new insights into the converging currents of political and economic history in the Lake Victoria region.