Buganda's contacts with Arab and Muslim traders…

Buganda's contacts with Arab and Muslim traders from Zanzibar, who trade firearms, gunpowder, salt and cloth in exchange for ivory and slaves, began in the 1840s and had continued during the reign of Kabaka Muteesa I.

At the same time, contact had been made with European visitors for the first time in 1862 when John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant arrived.

Their positive accounts had attracted more visitors and Henry Morton Stanley had arrived in 1875.

Muteesa I had invited the Church Missionary Society to Buganda; one of the missionaries from the Society was Alexander Murdoch Mackay.

The Roman Catholics had arrived in 1879, in the person of Father Simon Lourdel Monpel, popularly known as Pere Mapeera and Brother Amans, of the White Fathers.

All three visitor groups had been made to believe that Kabaka Muteesa I preferred their religion over the others.

They had thus written favorable reviews back home to their respective governments, encouraging trade and friendly relations.

Most of what is known about Muteesa comes from primary sources from various Kiganda researchers and some foreign explorers, notably John Hanning Speke, and the Church Missionary Society.

Muteesa, who had never converted to any religion, despite the numerous tries, had died in 1884, and his son Mwanga II had taken over.

Mwanga sees the greatest threat to his rule coming from the Christian missionaries who have gradually penetrated Buganda.

His father had played-off the three religions; Catholics, Protestants and Muslims against each other and thus balanced the influence of the colonial powers that back each group.

Mwanga II has taken a much more aggressive approach, expelling missionaries and insisting that Christian converts abandon their faith or face death.

On October 29, 1885, he had had the incoming archbishop, James Hannington, murdered on the eastern border of his kingdom.

Between 1885 and 1887, over forty-five of Mwanga's pages have been put to death on the orders of the king himself.

The crime is failure to renounce their newfound Christian beliefs and their refusal of the king's sexual demands.

Twenty-two of the men, who had converted to Catholicism, had been burned alive at Namugongo in 1886; they will later become known as the Uganda Martyrs.

Among those executed were two Christians who had held the court position of Master of the Pages, Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe and Charles Lwanga.