Crisis & Decline in Bunyoro — (2006)

Population & Environment in Western Uganda 1860–1955

By Shane Doyle

”This work is a welcome and salutory history of colonial loss and decline that incorporates colonial politics and policy, but goes beyond to focus on demographics, disease, and environment. Summing Up: Highly recommended.”

CHOICE

“Arguably the most important study of a much-neglected society in more than thirty years.”

African Affairs

The Kingdom of Bunyoro's story demonstrates convincingly that environmental change there was not a uniform, statewide process. In one of the first studies of the political ecology of a major African kingdom, Crisis & Decline in Bunyoro addresses state capacity, ideology, and government legitimacy as crucial issues. Shane Doyle focuses on the interplay between levels of environmental activity within a highly stratified society. Political ecology was as much about the differential impact of conflict on society as about the uneven extraction and distribution of resources.