Katwe salt in the African Great Lakes regional economy, 1750s--1950s (Uganda, Rwanda, Congo, Sudan, Tanzania)

The Katwe salt industry was a key factor in the pre-colonial centrality of the western lakes region in the regional economy of the Great Lakes region of Central Africa that includes present-day Uganda, Rwanda, eastern Congo, southern Sudan, and northern Tanzania. Western Uganda, as a consequence of geography and British colonial history, has been overshadowed by the historiographical emphasis on the kingdom of Buganda. The colonial presence did not destroy this local salt industry nor did it connect it to the global economy. While the industry has been affected by East Africa's increasing incorporation into the international economy starting in the latter nineteenth century, African traders and producers continue to engage the salt industry in the regional niche economy.; This work illuminates regional trade networks rather than focusing on trade between Africa and Europe. I situate this small-scale, regional set of processes within larger world-scale historical forces at play in East Africa at the turn of the twentieth century. However, contrary to most world systems theory, I argue that global demands did not determine the outcome of local processes. This industry illustrates the resilience of local and regional processes and the unevenness of capitalist penetration and imperial and colonial hegemony. Katwe salt retains a niche that imported salt cannot fill, and its trade suits infrastructure conditions that contact with the global economy did not significantly change. The production of salt at Katwe has not been of exportable value, but it has confounded expectations by remaining viable decades after the point at which most histories pronounce it dead or in foreign hands.; My work uses new oral data and new interpretations of archival data to depart from the trend of focusing on the colonial period, and locates in pre-colonial events the roots of socio-economic transformation typically associated with the colonial period. It provides a long view of the history of the organization of labor at Katwe that shows that though the predominance of women at Katwe as owners and laborers is a recent development, the labor-intensive nature of the daily work of salt production has made it the realm of slaves and women probably since the development of salt evaporation pans.