Building and transgressing borders in the Great Lakes region of East Africa

Abstract

This paper serves as a thematic introduction to a collection of six articles published in this issue of the Journal of Eastern African Studies, these having originally been presented at a conference on Mobilités, traces et frontières dans l'Afrique des Grands Lacs, XII^e–XXI^e siècle, held at the Sorbonne, Paris, in October 2007. This introduction discusses the meaning of physical and social boundaries, and the limits and transgressions on boundary crossings in the Great Lakes region. We have chosen to use the term boundary in a broad sense, literally and metaphorically. The general theme of this collection of papers is the relation between society and space which translates into territories that in turn produce or modify “imagined communities”. The collection of papers thus deals with both external and internal boundaries in the Great Lakes region.

Keywords:

• border
• frontier
• international boundaries
• internal boundaries
• Great Lakes Region

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Claire Médard, Valérie Golaz, Olivette Otele and Cecilia Pennacini for their proof reading and comments on this paper.

Notes

1. President Museveni on district boundaries disputes, quoted from New Vision: Opulot, Omoding and Businge, “M7 to settle,” 5.

2. These papers were presented at the conference Mobilités, traces et frontières dans l'Afrique des Grands Lacs, XIIe–XXIe siècle, held on October 19–20, 2007, at the Sorbonne in Paris. It was organised by Cecilia Pennacini and Henri Médard, with the help of the Galileo project Histoire et anthropologie de l'Afrique des Grands Lacs of the Franco-Italian University, the Università di Torino, the University of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne, the Missione Etnologica Italiana in Africa Equatoriale and the Centre d'Etudes des Mondes Africains (Cemaf). See Camille Lefebvre, “Mobilités, traces, et frontières,” 598–605, for a detailed published conference report.

3. I wish to thank Cecilia Pennacini for her contribution to this paragraph.

4. Concerning the issue of African boundaries, I benefited from discussions over the years with Claire Médard, Pierre Boilley and Camille Lefebvre and more recently from the work carried out by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) Front Afrique at the Cemaf.

5. Robinson, Gallagher and Denny, Africa and the Victorians.

6. Brunschwig, Le partage de l'Afrique , 156–60.

7. Pourtier, “Du Zaire au Congo.”

8. Foucher, Fronts et frontières .

9. For example, Bach, “Contraintes et ressources de la frontière.”

10. Kopytoff, The African Frontier . In Uganda the question of colonial frontier is older; see, Barber, Imperial Frontier, a work of 1968.

11. See, for example, the frontier and no man's land between the Habsbourg and Ottoman empires; Braudel, La Méditerranée.

12. Boilley, “La question des frontières africaines”; 409–18. Lefebvre, “Les frontières du Niger”; von Oppen, “Bounding Villages”; Nugent, Smugglers, Secessionists and Loyal Citizens.

13. For example, Médard, Le royaume du Buganda, 48–61 ; Médard, “Pouvoir et territoire au Royaume du Buganda.” I am also indebted to the workshop organised by Marie Laure Derat and Camille Lefebvre “Conception de l'espace et appropriation du territoire en Afrique jusqu'au xixe siècle” on the June 11, 2008 at the Cemaf in Ivry

14. Mbembe, “At the Edge of the World,” 22–51; Pourtier, Le Gabon; Bach, “Fédéralisme et modèle consociatif”; Médard, “Territoires de l'ethnicité”; Golaz, Pression démographique.

15. Pourtier, Le Gabon.

16. Opulot, Omoding and Businge. “M7 to settle Katakwi Kotido border dispute.”

17. Chrétien, “The Slave Trade in Burundi and Rwanda,” 212–13. Médard, Le royaume du Buganda, 445–550.

18. Pennacini, “Religious Mobility”; Facci, “Dances.”

19. Doyle, “Immigrants and Indigenes”; Saur, “La frontiere ethnique”; Raeymaekers and Jourdan, “Economic Opportunities.”

20. See Raeymaekers and Jourdan, “Economic Opportunities.”

21. Facci, “Dances”; Raeymaekers and Jourdan, “Economic Opportunities”

22. Behlouli, “La protection des ‘jardins d’éden’,” 32–8.

23. Pennacini, Rwenzori.

24. Facci, “Dances.”

25. Raeymaekers and Jourdan, “Economic opportunities.”

26. Kopytoff, The African Frontier.

27. Doyle, “Immigrants and Indigenes.”

28. Lwanga, The Struggle for Land in Buganda. For migration and integration in 1966 see Robertson, Community of Strangers

29. Médard, Le royaume du Buganda, 93–113, 153–81.

30. Ssenkabirwa and Mwanje, “Buganda and Bunyoro Renew Rivalry over Buluuli County.”

31. Saur, “La frontiere ethnique”

32. Nannyonga-Tamusuza, “Female-men, Male-women.”

33. Pennacini, “Religious Mobility.”

34. Facci, “Dances.”

35. Mauss, “Les techniques du corps.”

36. Pennacini, “Religious Mobility.”

37. Lefebvre, “Mobilités, traces, et frontières,” 605.