The Impact of Colonialism on Indigenous African Military Institutions

This article focuses on the impact of colonialism on indigenous African military institutions by examining the case of Ugenya, a sub-group of the Luo of western Kenya. It adds to the body of historical literature on the conquest of Kenya, delving into changes that the British introduced in Ugenya to dismantle the Ugenya military from the 1890s to 1914. Its main contention is that when the European colonial powers invaded Africa, they did not just use force and violence to subjugate Africans, they also introduced policies whose sole aim was to emasculate future African military capacity to wage war against colonial aggression: colonial policies gradually neutralized the African military and reduced the capacity of indigenous populations to resist colonial domination.