Fighters' Club: the Empire of Mirambo and Nyungu ya Mawe in East Africa

Abstract

If we look at the 19th-century map of Africa, we find numerous imperial political formations, which in many cases posed a serious challenge to the European colonizers who shaped the history of the second half of the century. These empires can be divided into two groups based on their age: the first includes long-standing state formations, such as Dahomey and Benin in the west, or inter-lake state formations in East Africa, such as Bunyoro, Buganda, Rwanda or Burundi. Some empires were formed at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as the southern African kingdoms that emerged during the Mfecane Wars, or reached their greatest geographical extent at that time: such as Ethiopia or the Bamum Kingdom in Cameroon.