Crisis & Decline in Bunyoro — 2006 ·

Population & Environment in Western Uganda 1860–1955

By Shane Doyle

”This work is a welcome and salutory history of colonial loss and decline that incorporates colonial politics and policy, but goes beyond to focus on demographics, disease, and environment. Summing Up: Highly recommended.”

CHOICE

“Although some might contend that Bunyoro’s experience was atypical for colonial Uganda, it is nevertheless valuable for historians to have access to studies like this as it important to understand the experience of all regions of colonial East Africa.”

The Historian

“Arguably the most important study of a much-neglected society in more than thirty years.”

African Affairs

The Kingdom of Bunyoro's story demonstrates convincingly that environmental change there was not a uniform, statewide process. In one of the first studies of the political ecology of a major African kingdom, Crisis & Decline in Bunyoro addresses state capacity, ideology, and government legitimacy as crucial issues. Shane Doyle focuses on the interplay between levels of environmental activity within a highly stratified society. Political ecology was as much about the differential impact of conflict on society as about the uneven extraction and distribution of resources.

Shane Doyle is a lecturer in history at Leeds University.