The early history of Uganda comprises the history of Uganda before the territory that is today Uganda was made into a British protectorate at the end of the 19th century. Prior to this, the region was divided between several closely related kingdoms.
Earliest history
Paleolithic evidence of human activity in Uganda goes back to at least 50,000 years, and perhaps as far as 100,000 years, as shown by the Acheulean stone tools recovered from the former environs of Lake Victoria, which were exposed along the Kagera River valley, chiefly around Nsonezi. Rock art in Uganda, particularly in the eastern part of the country, attests to occupation during the Later Stone Age as well.
Uganda's position along the central African Rift Valley, its favourable climate at an altitude of 1,200 meters and above, and reliable rainfall around the Lake Victoria Basin made it attractive to African cultivators and herders as early as the fourth century BCE. Core samples from the bottom of Lake Victoria have revealed that dense rainforest once covered the land around the lake. Centuries of cultivation removed almost all the original tree cover. The Ancient Kuliak presence in Uganda can be seen in Kansyore Pottery and ancient Pollen samples.
Bantu expansion
Bantu speaking farmers first arrived in far-southern Uganda in the year 1000BC. and with whose elites they sometimes joined and intermarried. It is theorized a system of patron-client relationships developed, whereby a pastoral elite emerged, entrusting the care of cattle to subjects who used the manure to improve the fertility of their increasingly overworked gardens and fields.
In some regions, pastoral elites were of partly Nilotic descent, while in others they may have derived mainly from the Bantu population (so theorized by the linguist David L. Schoenbrun from certain of those relatives of wealthy banana cultivators who were not eligible for inheritance). The latter had gradually adopted specialist pastoralism as a source of wealth in the area's rich grasslands. The earliest states may have been established in the 15th century by a group of pastoral rulers called the Chwezi. There, as in the nearby Haya kingdom of west Tanzania, the wealth of the ruling class continued to depend more on banana lands and groves than cattle, and no sharp caste-like distinction between farmers and herders formed. Buganda became a refuge area, however, for those who wished to escape rule by Bunyoro or for factions within Bunyoro who were defeated in contests for power.
According to Rita M. Byrnes, one such group from Bunyoro, headed by Prince Kimera, arrived in Buganda early in the 15th century. For communication across the kingdom, the messengers were supplemented by drum signals.
Most communities in Uganda, however, were not organized on such a vast political scale. When intrusion from the outside world finally came, it was in the form of long-distance trade for ivory.
Ivory had been a staple trade item from the coast of East Africa since before the Christian era. sent a British explorer, Samuel Baker, on a military expedition to the frontiers of Bunyoro, with the object of suppressing the slave-trade there and opening the way to commerce and civilisation. The khedive appointed Baker Governor-General of the new territory named Equatoria.
The Banyoro resisted Baker, and he had to fight a desperate battle to secure his retreat. Both Speke and Stanley (based on his 1875 stay in Uganda) wrote books that praised the Baganda for their organisational skills and willingness to modernise. Stanley went further and attempted to convert the king to Christianity.
In January 1892, fighting broke out between the Protestant and Catholic Baganda converts. The Catholics quickly gained the upper hand, until Lugard intervened with a prototype machine gun, the Maxim (named after its American inventor, Hiram Maxim).