Shifting marginalities in Ham Mukasa and Sir Apolo Kagwa’s Uganda’s Katikiro in England

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn Uganda’s Katikiro in England (a record of the journey that Sir Apolo Kagwa and his personal secretary, Ham Mukasa, made to England to attend the coronation of Edward VII) there are several instances where Mukasa and Kagwa seem to occupy a marginal position as colonized subjects. Yet there are also moments when Kagwa and Mukasa are not marginal at all (for instance as Christ’s Generals who have just fought two major religious wars in Buganda, as writers of books, and as Baganda patriots who desire to advance their land and people). I show that for Kagwa and Mukasa to receive the technological, educational, and governmental aid they so much desire for Buganda Kingdom, they need to perform a certain kind of ambivalent subjectivity – marginal in relation to England and yet central enough to the institution of Empire and Englishness to merit response. The paper examines the role these shifting marginalities play in the travelogue (which exists only in English translation, the original written in Luganda is lost) as spaces of effective bargaining.