Jonathon L. Earle & J.J. Carney 
Contesting Catholics [EPUB ebook] 
Benedicto Kiwanuka and the Birth of Postcolonial Uganda

First scholarly treatment of Uganda’s first elected ruler; offers new insights into the religious and political history of modern Uganda.






Assassinated by Idi Amin and a democratic ally of J.F. Kennedy during the Cold War, Benedicto Kiwanuka was Uganda’s most controversial and disruptive politician, and his legacy is still divisive. On the eve of independence, he ledthe Democratic Party (DP), a national movement of predominantly Catholic activists, to end political inequalities and religious discrimination. Along the way, he became Uganda’s first prime minister and first Ugandan chief justice. Earle and Carney show how Kiwanuka and Catholic activists struggled to create an inclusive vision of the state, a vision that resulted in relentless intimidation and extra-judicial killings. Focusing closely on the competing Catholic projects that circulated throughout Uganda, this book offers new ways of thinking about the history of democratic thought, while pushing the study of Catholicism in Africa outside of the church and beyond the gaze of missionaries. Drawing on never before seen sources from Kiwanuka’s personal papers, the authors upend many of the assumptions that have framed Uganda’s political and religious history for over sixty years, as well as repositioning Uganda’s politics within the global arena.


Jonathon Earle is Associate Professor of African History, Centre College, where he holds the Marlene and David Grissom Professorship of Social Studies, and author of
Colonial Buganda and the End of Empire: Political Thought and Historical Imagination in Africa (2017), which was a finalist for the African Studies Association’s Bethwell A. Ogot award. J.J. Carney is Associate Professor of Theology, Creighton University, and author of
Rwanda before the Genocide: Catholic Politics and Ethnic Discourse in the Late Colonial Era (2014), which won the Ogot award.

Table des matières

Introduction: Catholic Democracy and Political Duress in Colonial Uganda

Benedicto Kiwanuka, Catholic Uganda and the Gospel of Democracy

Republicanism and Secession in Tesoland and Rwenzururu

Catholic Violence and Political Revolution in Bunyoro and Kigezi

Acholi Alliances and Party Insurrection in Ankole

Catholic Patronage and Royalist Alternatives in Buganda

‘I offer today my body and blood’: Violence, Resistance, and Martyrdom

Conclusion: Memory and Memorialisation

A propos de l’auteur

J.J. Carney is Associate Professor of Theology, Creighton University, and author of Rwanda before the Genocide: Catholic Politics and Ethnic Discourse in the Late Colonial Era (2014), which won the Ogot award.