Distributed Power: Climate Change, Elderhood, and Republicanism in the Grasslands of East Africa, c. 500 BCE to 1800 CE

Fitzsimons, William

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-zjke-kw11

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Distributed Power: Climate Change, Elderhood, and Republicanism in the Grasslands of East Africa, c. 500 BCE to 1800 CE

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This dissertation examines the longue durée political history of Ateker-speaking agro-pastoralists in the semi-arid plains of today’s Uganda – Kenya – Ethiopia – South Sudan borderlands. Today’s Ateker-speaking communities include the Karimojong, Teso, Turkana, Toposa, Dodos, Jie, Nyangatom, and Jiye. Over the past millennium, Ateker-speaking communities developed a diversity of political institutions – including age-class governments (asapan) and neighborhood congresses (etem) – that enabled them to build durable polities and expand territorially while incorporating new groups. These Ateker political configurations were distinct from better-studied kingdoms and chieftaincies in the region because they were decentralized and accorded power to office-holders on the basis of factors other than lineage or kin affiliation. Highlighting these Ateker cases, this dissertation argues for the inclusion of an new paradigm of political “republicanism” in the historiography of precolonial Africa. African republicanism is contrasted with another dominant political paradigm, that of “Wealth-in-People.” A distinction is drawn between the former, in which the government is a public good or res publica, and the latter, in which governance is constituted by networks of relationships that people both “belong in” and “belong to.” The significance of this difference for broader historical study is elaborated in Chapter One. Because documentary records are virtually non-existent for the setting under consideration, other historical sources are drawn upon to support the dissertation’s argument. Chief among these is historical linguistics, but archaeology, paleoclimate science, comparative ethnography, and oral traditions also play a role. Strands of evidence from each of these methods are woven together to explore changes and continuities in Ateker politics, society, and economics between c. 500 BCE and 1800 CE.

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