SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This thesis represents the first attempt to reconstruct the pre-colonial history of the Jie of Uganda. It is also the first detailed historical, study of any of the Central Paranilotic-speaking peoples of Karamoja District, Uganda, or of neighbouring areas of north-western Kenya or the southern Sudan. This reconstruction has been based primarily on Jie oral tradition, systematically collected during a sixteen month period of field-work. Because this research project is among the first in which one of the more pastorally-oriented communities of East Africa has been studied, the rather specialised methodological approaches which elicited the historical data used in this thesis are described in detail. A discussion of a chronology based on the Jie gene-ration-set system is also included. While this thesis covers many aspects of the Jie historical experience from c. 1720 to c. 1915, its central theme is that of the development of the Jie political community. To fully understand that development, a number of inter-related secondary themes are also dealt with. One of these secondary themes is the traditional excercise of authority, both by the gerontocracy of senior elders which operates within the context of the Jie generation-set system, and by hereditary functionaries (ritual fire-makers and war-leaders) who operate outside that system. In discussing the rise of the hereditary functionaries, the Jie New Fire ritual and the development of the Jie military system are also examined.