Collecting Uganda: Rethinking Colonial Politics through Objects

This article examines the material underpinnings of the political diplomacy pursued by Ugandan leaders towards European colonial figures in the late nineteenth century. Imperial historians have traditionally understood the institutional processes of treaty-making, diplomacy and state administration as part of the workings of the European “Official Mind.” As such, analyses have been overwhelmingly based upon written colonial sources such as governmental papers. This article provides an alternative perspective on institutional life in Uganda by demonstrating that material objects also served as sites of political praxis for both the governed and those governing when exchanged in the form of a gift. The products of these exchanges can be found in museums across Uganda, Kenya, and Britain. Their biographies shed important new light on the interactions between the material and political worlds as well as between local leaders and the imperial state, yet they have received little critical attention from historians. This article seeks to reinstate their role into the political process, and in doing so, reconfigures our understanding of these different imperial institutions.