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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Poverty and Wealth in Traditional African Societies: Considerations Regarding Wealth, Well-Being, and Nutrition in the Ganda and Nyoro Societies, c.1800 to 1875
Author:Kuhanen, JanISNI
Year:2000
Periodical:Nordic Journal of African Studies
Volume:9
Issue:1
Pages:70-97
Language:English
Geographic term:Uganda
Subjects:poverty
social welfare
Buganda polity
Bunyoro-Kitara polity
nutrition
history
traditional polities
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Economics and Trade
History and Exploration
External link:https://www.njas.fi/njas/article/view/629/452
Abstract:The question of nutrition and nutritional status has not, with the exception of famines, been adequately dealt with for the period of precolonial Africa. When speaking of malnutrition, we are dealing with an extreme form of poverty. This paper describes the distribution of wealth and well-being in the late 19th century in two neighbouring interlacustrine kingdoms, Buganda and Bunyoro-Kitara. Well-being refers to material as well as physical, or biological, well-being, which refers to an individual's nutritional and health status. The author assumes that the accumulation and distribution of wealth depended on the shifts in political and military power on intra and intersocietal levels, and that these shifts thus had considerable consequences for the distribution of material and biological well-being between and inside the societies in question. Thus, the paper is also about poverty. It reconstructs a small part of the African historical reality on the basis of information provided by modern research and the narratives of early European travellers and attempts to decide whether the picture thus obtained could be accurate on the basis of modern knowledge about nutritional questions and the African past. Bibliogr., notes, ref.
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