Crises of Legitimacy and Political Violence in Colonial Uganda, 1890–1962

Abstract

K.W. Grundy and M.A. Weinstein noted how imperialism normalizes and justifies political violence against the target population: Beyond the double-morality…is the idea that one’s own group has a civilizing mission with respect to other groups. This civilizing mission involves the notion that one’s own group has a duty to impose its normative order on other peoples....The view that some people have a civilizing mission became widespread in the nineteenth century as a justification for imperialism....The major justification of violence in the expansionist ideology is that it functions to facilitate the domination of a superior group over an inferior group.... In an expansionist’s ideology violence against the inferior is justified as a right and in some instances even the duty of the superior.