Buganda is meanwhile receiving not only trade…

Buganda is meanwhile receiving not only trade goods and guns, but also a stream of foreign visitors.

The explorer J. H. Speke had passed through Buganda in 1862 and claimed he had discovered the source of the Nile.

Both Speke and Stanley (based on his 1875 stay in Uganda) write books that praise the Baganda for their organizational skills and willingness to modernize.

Stanley goes further and attempts to convert the king to Christianity.

Finding Kabaka Mutesa I apparently receptive, Stanley writes to the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in London and persuades it to send missionaries to Buganda in 1877.

Two years after the CMS establishes a mission, French Catholic White Fathers also arrive at the king's court, and the stage is set for a fierce religious and nationalist rivalry in which Zanzibar-based Muslim traders also participate.

By the mid-1880s, all three parties have been successful in converting substantial numbers of Baganda, some of whom attain important positions at court.