Book Launch - Homosexuality in Precolonial Africa

This work aims to shed light on Buganda in the late 19th century, unpacking the politics of sex and how it changed as the century ended.
About this Event

Studying sexuality can be challenging across the world but the scarcity of written sources and the selective and censored memory of oral sources make it even more challenging on Africa. However, the Kingdom of Buganda (today part of Uganda) in the late 19th century offers an exceptionally well documented case study with detailed African and European sources. In 1886, Christians were persecuted and executed by order of King Mwanga. They were latter canonised and made into Saints by the Catholic Church. Sources on this event provide an extraordinary wealth of information on men that have sex with men. This collection of unusual historical sources provides a unique opportunity to understand homosexuality as an African phenomenon.
This work aims to shed light on Buganda in the late 19th century, unpacking the ways in which the understanding of men who have sex with men changed during the last decades of the 19th century and how homophobia was then politicised. Homosexuality provides a lens for key aspects of political relationships in Buganda during this period, which saw a Christian oligarchy and the British colonial rulers establish a new order on the ruins of an African kingdom shaken by an ideological crisis.