Storie di modifiche territoriali: infrastrutture, commercio, politica in Uganda

This article analyses the impact of British administrative and infrastructural reforms on the political, economic, and territorial reorganisation of eastern Uganda, highlighting the profound continuities between the colonial era and the postcolonial state. Drawing on the theoretical framework developed by Charis Enns and Brock Bersaglio in 2020, which emphasises the persistence of colonial infrastructural logics in contemporary African contexts, the study shows how these dynamics have had a substantial impact on the territories east of Kampala, from Jinja to the Mount Elgon region. Drawing on British and Ugandan archival sources, complemented by fieldwork, the article reconstructs the formation of a region whose economic importance, marginal in the pre-colonial era compared to the great kingdoms of Buganda and Bunyoro, was radically transformed by imperial strategies. The conquest and reorganisation of the area, conducted by the British with the decisive collaboration of the Baganda, produced new territorial, administrative, and land-ownership structures that homogenised a region previously fragmented into multiple centres of power. At the same time, the construction of physical infrastructure, primarily the Uganda Railway and, after World War II, the Owen Falls Dam, inserted eastern Uganda into an integrated regional economic network, connecting the Protectorate to the coast of British East Africa and stimulating the development of plantations and urban centres such as Jinja and Mbale. The study highlights how, starting in the early twentieth century, eastern Uganda became a strategic hub of the national and regional economy. Colonial infrastructure, therefore, continues to influence development policies and contemporary narratives, revealing the persistence of territorial, economic, and political logics rooted in history.