what are interlacustrine kingdoms

42 This relies on Jeremy Meredith's observations of the pottery collections, site by site and layer by layer, analysing by both shapes and decoration, including a variety of roulettes. View all Google Scholar citations Andrew Reid's survey of the district (see Nyame Akuma, xxxiii [1990], 26–9)Google Scholar has increased enormously the number of these sites known. 9 Apparently he did not reflect on whether each reign was a true generation. Hist., XXIII (1982), 433–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar. [citation needed Founding. 55 Fine, black graphited wares – see Posnansky, M., ‘Pottery types’, J. Afr. I have lived in Kampala since I was two … Published online by Cambridge University Press: He left his capital at Mubende hill in charge of his favorite wife Nakayima. Johnston, H. H., The Uganda Protectorate (London, 1902)Google Scholar; MrsFisher, A. 56 Discussed by Sassoon, ‘Kings, cattle and blacksmiths’. 3: c. 1050–1600 [Cambridge, 1977], 621–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar ‘Chwezi’ barely figure in this way in the history of Buganda, which is marginal to the Kitara cultural zone. Even these oral traditions have to be treated with rigour, but going into 3rd hand accounts produce more difficulties and problems of transmission. Until now there has been, for lack of an adequate chronology, a tendency to roll the changes into a single process of ‘northern’ influences or to posit a combination of internal and external factors around the fourteenth or fifteenth century: cf. and a.d., largely because of clearance for both agriculture and iron-working, and that around 1000 a.d. the optimal environments for cattle-herding had been attained. As we shall see (this happened frequently in west Africa where the dominant minority was Muslim), the subordinate group may be more open to acquire education and Christianity; as governments require more educated personnel, these are the people that get ahead and their status rises. - in Europe in the early days of feudalism, the system was not too much different, but kings began to build bureaucracies. We shall come upon this element in virtually every discussion of African political systems and societies. [89] Several other kingdoms and chiefdoms are officially recognised by the government, including the union of Alur chiefdoms, the Iteso paramount chieftaincy, the paramount chieftaincy of Lango and the Padhola … Marchant, R. A. See also Wrigley, ‘The kinglists’. The ceramic comparisons with Mubende, Munsa and nearby Ntusi suggest at the present stage of research a dating for Bigo very roughly around five to seven centuries ago. - this issue has been a matter of some debate and there are some similarities with European feudalism. Central Africa is represented by chapters on the area between the coast and the great lakes, the interlacustrine region and the basins of the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. Perhaps the number of early pastoralist migrants was less and they were more absorbed by the agriculturalists. Embedded within the rich traditional history of Uganda is the tale of the majestic Kitara Empire, one of the oldest and greatest kingdom settings that ever existed in the interlacustrine; call it the Great Lakes region.. "shouldUseHypothesis": true, Alongside this, both Reid and Ephraim Kamuhangire have been investigating the pastoral ecology of the district and current Hima herding strategies. However, many scholars would argue that this bureaucratic development in fact gradually brought feudalism to an end in Europe. Hostname: page-component-7d4b4df4cc-rjtmw VAN KLINKEN, G. J. Ganda was divided into clearly defined districts with governors and sub-districts with chiefsa clearly defined hierarchy based upon territory. Certain of these have been claimed as Chwezi royal capitals of ancient Kitara, and specific features have been compared with royal abodes of recent centuries. Full text views reflects PDF downloads, PDFs sent to Google Drive, Dropbox and Kindle and HTML full text views. In other words, an entirely new system of status and stratification emerges and the positions of the subordinate and superordinate groups gets reversed. Henige, ‘Reflections’, makes a much less sanguine assessment of the evidence and argues for substantial changes in and expansion of the ‘official’ king-list between 1862 and 1875. and The empire was founded by the Chwezi (With Bantu prefix: Bachwezi or Bacwezi) who were the successors of the Tembuzi (Batembuzi). After we have looked at several societies, I shall try to draw some generalisations about this aspect and its importance in understanding African outlooks (cosmologies) and in understanding the effects on social and political behaviours. See also Speke, , Journal, ch. Many of these are for beer; there are cooking bananas too, but in years of less than average rainfall these prove inadequate, and extra supplies are brought by motor transport from the wetter Masaka direction nearer to Lake Victoria. 13 Posnansky, M., ‘The excavation of an Ankole capital site at Bweyorere’, Uganda J., XXXII (1968), 165–82Google Scholar; cf. [Some oral traditions of Polynesian peoples in Hawaii and of theMaori of New Zealand go back even furtherover a 1000 years.]. Eastern Africa consists largely of plateaus and has most of the highest The others, lying to the west, are Ankole, Toro and Bunyoro. The site is of some size and preserves a number of enclosures and other visible features. - in Nkole, the warrior caste defined themselves as cattle keepers, and these had no control, rights, etc. The radiocarbon readings from samples obtained during the 1960 excavations do not in general contradict this but are too imprecise to help the argument further. 37 D. L. Baines in 1909 (Uganda Official Gazette, used by Wayland, E. J., ‘Notes on the Biggo bya Mugenyi’, Uganda J., II [1934], 21–3)Google Scholar; and Gorju, , Entre le Victoria, 47–8, 53–5.Google Scholar The latter's information does not seem to have been entirely independent, while Baines, from his own account, appears to have relied as much on Baganda informants as on local Hima knowledge (or had the latter channelled to him by the former). This was the contract; in return for receiving these resources (the land, the labour, and the surpluses produced), the warrior (knight) was to provide services and supportmilitary, political, even financial in some cases. When a vassal died, his heir had to appear and go through the ceremonies in order to inherit officially. and In fact the list does not seem to add up to twenty. 6 These written works are listed by Cohen, D. W., ‘A survey of interlacustrine chronology’, J. Afr. Apparently while in Karagwe, the traditions of that kingdom had been told to him by reference to greater Kitara. On types of rouletted decorations and a working terminology, see Soper, R., ‘Roulette decoration on African pottery: technical considerations, dating and distributions’, African Archaeological Review, III (1985), 29–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Until recently, it has been generally thought that string or knotted roulettes were not employed in the interlacustrine and other eastern African regions until early in the second millennium a.d. Ndahura abdicated his throne and disappeared around the crater lakes area in Fort Portal leaving his son Wamala in charge. Note also the position of early Iron Age objects in later sites in Rwanda, which include both real and supposed royal graves: Van Noten, Les tombes. Not surprisingly, the more remote the time period covered by the oral tradition,the more difficulties there are.- best of course are oral accounts of eye witnesses (great efforts have been made in some cases to record accounts of old people before they die) or accounts of what people were told by eye witnesses (often parents and grandparents). The Far Interior: Interlacustrine Kingdoms. In a society where almost everything is different for the different castesHima and Iru the Drum Cult applies to everyone and the Drum is interested in the welfare of everyone.- however, Oberg also notes other elements of religion and the supernatural in passing; these elements or variations are almost universal in Africa: - a key point to note is that for Africans, almost everything is influenced and even determined by supernatural forces; thus, no one can ignore these elements either at the individual and family levels or at the political and societal levels. (ed. While there were certainly status differences in Ganda and Nyoro, there were not the rigid castes described in Nkole.- however, in Rwanda and Burundi, the social and political structures were similar to Nkole with fairly rigid separation of pastoral Tutsi and agricultural Hutu. 33 See Schmidt, ‘A new look’, on eastern Buhaya, and especially the Rugamora Mahe site. 1994. “The hierarchical socio-political organization of these kingdoms exhibited a pattern characteristic of interlacustrine cultures. ), History of East Africa (3 vols.) 1960: 'Feudalism among the interlacustrine kingdoms' in Audrey I. Sally Chilver's publications Central Africa is represented by chapters on the area between the coast and the great lakes, the interlacustrine region and the basins of the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. Visitors in the 1870s managed to add only two more names: see Henige, , ‘Ganda and Nyoro’, 244–5.Google Scholar, 8 In 1875 Stanley was able to gather much fuller details than Speke had on Ganda dynastic history and legend (Dark Continent, 344–80) and to produce a list of 35 kings (p. 380). (Ruth), Twilight Tales of the Black Baganda (London, 1911Google Scholar: mostly about Bunyoro, despite its inappropriate title); Père Gorju, J.-L., Entre le Victoria, l'Albert et l'Edouard (Rennes, 1920)Google Scholar; and the various works of J. Roscoe from 1911. 58 Grant found Kibiro salt prized in Bunyoro in 1862: A Walk Across Africa, 296. Nkole and the Interlacustrine Kingdoms. Proponents of the latter argue that colonial authorities used divide and conquer tactics and favoured one group over the other to create the hatreds. 'Feudalism' in the Interlacustrine Kingdoms. The length of the middle period, or rather the beginning of later Iron Age developments no less than 1000 years ago, is emphasized by Oliver, Roland, ‘The Nilotic contribution to Bantu Africa’, J. Afr. J. Afr. Total loading time: 0.33 "newCitedByModal": true It may have been the growing strains of a delicately balanced economy as competition increased for cattle and the pastures which led to its eventual breakdown. I shall try to explain this statement further in this paper. Ankole is the model interlacustrine kingdom, possibly founded and certainly upheld by nomads.3 Nowhere else in this region are the descendants of these pastoral 'founders' still so sharply distinct from the indigenous cultivators.4 If the neighbouring kingdoms (Buganda, Bunyoro, Toro, Ruanda, Urundi et … 34 This Masaka Hill is not to be confused with the town of Masaka over 100 km to its south-east. One at Kakinga, about 5 km south-east of Ntusi, seems on a single radiocarbon result to belong around the end of the Ntusi sequence, in the fifteenth or early sixteenth century. (ed. Inst., LVIII (1955), 111–17.Google Scholar, 11 Exceptions have been made, notably in Rwanda: Noten, F. L. Van, Les tombes du roi Cyirima Rujugira et de la reine-mère Nyirayuhi Kanjogera (Tervuren, 1972).Google Scholar On shrines, not necessarily burials, materials in them and collections of royal insignia, see Schmidt, P. R., Historical Archaeology: A Structural Approach to an African Culture (Westport, Conn., 1978)Google Scholar; and Sassoon, H., ‘Kings, cattle and blacksmiths: royal insignia and religious symbolism in the interlacustrine states’, Azania, XVIII (1983), 93–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 12 Morris, H. F., ‘Historic sites in Ankole’, Uganda J., XX (1956), 177–81Google Scholar; Oliver, R., ‘Ancient capital sites of Ankole’, Uganda J., XXIII (1959), 51–63Google Scholar; Reid, A. and Robertshaw, P., ‘A new look at Ankole capitals’, Azania, XXII (1987), 83–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar.