On the 9th October 1962 a territory achieved through conquest and assimilation was handed over to a very eager native populace, this country was a ‘’protectorate’’ for 68 years. During this period the United Kingdom ruled the area that is now Uganda and it was under their protection, in school we are taught that this was to prohibit other colonial powers from exploiting us, however one peculiar thing stands out; this protectorate status is declared over territory previously administered and controlled by private enterprise, a huge part of what is considered Uganda was transferred over from the Imperial East African British Company to the United Kingdom that then established administrative law over the territory.
This history shows us that the territory we inhabit is rooted in a culture of control that disregards human individual agency, it was structured in a way that even with native resistance the company and the protectorate administration acquired land and human resources to control entire nation states, how they achieved this is mainly through violence. Now this claim may seem rather simple, it has been documented and is included in current history pedagogies but the discourse around it merely views this period of violent assimilation as a checkpoint in the inevitable road of progress, and this is understandable because one of the areas that this violence affected severely is cultural agency. Read more
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