The Cultural Topography of a ‘Bantu Borderland’: Busoga, 1500–1850

Abstract

The terrain of Busoga and adjacent areas of eastern Uganda constituted a portion of the boundary of the broad Bantu speech community of southern, central, west-central and eastern Africa. By examining closely the settings and circumstances of contact between Bantu and non-Bantu in this portion of the ‘Bantu line’ between approximately 1500 and 1850, it is possible to see the complexity of the ‘face of contact’ between speech communities in eastern Uganda. The study reviews several different efforts to comprehend and represent the evolving contacts between Bantu-speakers in the Busoga area and, in particular, Luo-speaking immigrants. Over the long run, many groups associated with Luo immigration took over Bantu speech while gaining dominant statuses and positions within the largely Bantu-speaking communities in the area. The study distinguishes five distinctive and non-homologous zones within this narrow stretch of the Bantu borderland, emphasizing through comparative analysis the very local, immediate, and contextual character of contacts across speech boundaries. It brings forward the economic and political significance of the circumstances of contact, and locates patterns of resistance, flux, and reflux within the era following the linguistic incorporation of the ‘stranger’ Luo within Bantu speech communities. Indeed, some of the important population flows in Busoga appear to have developed out of reactions to elaborated forms of domination building over a number of years, rather than as instant expressions of boundary and cultural formation by the participants in the experience.