A detailed overview of East African diplomacy at the end of the pre-colonial era, which provides a corrective to the commonly held view that African diplomats were inexperienced, naïve and parochial.


This book traces the history of an elite group that rose to power and wealth in the interlacustrine kingdoms of East Africa at the end of the eighteenth and over the course of the nineteenth century. Katikiro played a major role in shaping the history of their societies at a time of profound change. Royal administrators, chief advisors, envoys - these influential men navigated and directed shifts in the balance of power as old hegemons like the kingdom of Bunyoro stumbled, new contenders like Buganda and Rwanda emerged, the region opened up to trade with the East African Coast and Egypt, and Europeans arrived, first as explorers and missionaries and then as colonial rulers.

Katikiro were in midst of these changes: as politicians they shaped them; as diplomats they mediated them; and as wealthy businessmen they profited from them. Their rise in the nineteenth century offers a unique inside into the agency of Africans in these events and highlights the many continuities of pre-colonial and colonial histories in the region.