When the National Resistance Movement (NRM) came to power in 1986, its cadres overflowed with reformist zeal. They set out to transform Uganda's public life, put an end to ethnic division, and promote local democracy. Today much of this reformist energy has dissipated, and undemocratic kingdoms largely define the cultural landscape. This essay attempts to explain h...

This article uses E. P. Thompson's last book - Witness against the Beast (1993) - as an occasion to claim oddity, peculiarity, and nonconformity as subjects of African history. Africa's historians have been engaged in an earnest effort to locate contemporary cultural life within the longue durée, but in fact there was much that was strange and eccentric. Here I foc...

This article – the introduction to a collection of articles on Idi Amin's Uganda – illuminates the infrastructure of Amin's dictatorship. It was through the technology of the news media that Amin's officials found it possible to summon and direct the actions of Uganda's people. The news media's apparently extensive audience made it possible for the authorities to a...

An essay is presented which explores the history of political violence and activism in the lost counties of colonial Uganda. Emphasis is given to topics such as British colonial administration of the kingdom of Buganda, the territorial claims of the Nyoro people, and advocacy for abolition of slavery by activists such as Erisa Kalisa.