Part 1019

"It was in 1858 that the travellers Burton and Speke, starting from Zanzibar, first made Europe acquainted with the existence of that vast inland sea, the Victoria Lake, of which Rebmann and Ernhardt had already heard native reports. Four years later Speke and Grant, passing round the western shore, reached Uganda; and they found here, if I may employ the paradox, a singular, barbaric civilisation. Combined with the most barbarous usages and the grossest superstition were many of those advances in the scale of humanity which we are wont to accept as indications of civilisation. There was an appeal to law, and cases were decided after a formal hearing. The administration was vested in the king,—an absolute despot, —and from him downwards there existed a regular chain of delegated power and control. Well-made roads, kept constantly in repair, intersected the country in all directions. Rough bridges were constructed across river swamps. An army was maintained, and also a fleet of canoes on the waters of the lake. The arts of building, smith-work, &c., were very far in advance of anything to be found between Uganda and the coast. The ideas of decency, the use of clothing, and the planting of trees, were indications of long years of development, of which the intricate customs and etiquettes surrounding the Court were an additional proof. Speke traces the earliest developments of this civilisation to Unyoro and its shepherd kings, descendants of a nomadic, pastoral race—the Wahuma—whom he supposes to be an offshoot from the Abyssinians or Gallas. Uganda and the countries lying along the lake shore, being the richest province of this Wahuma empire—called Kitara—had to bring large quantities of produce to Unyoro for the king's use, and their inhabitants were looked on as slaves. The legend relates that a hunter named Uganda headed a revolt, and was proclaimed king under the name of Kimera. Mtesa was the seventh of the dynasty, according to Speke, which shows it to be of some little antiquity. Speke was enthusiastic about the fertility of Uganda, and the development of its people as compared with the savage tribes of Africa. The next European to visit the country was Colonel Chaillé Long, who was sent by Gordon in the summer of 1874. Stanley followed in 1875, and simultaneously Linant arrived in the country. In 1876 Gordon sent Emin with a party of soldiers to Mtesa's capital. They were for some time quartered there, and Gordon had views of annexing Uganda to the Egyptian Sudan. … Stanley was even louder in his praises of Uganda than Speke had been, and described it as the 'Pearl of Africa.' In consequence of his appeal on behalf of the people, a fund was started, and missionaries were despatched to Uganda. These arrived in June 1877. … Some two years later—February 1879—the French (Roman Catholic) Algerian Mission despatched a party of 'White Fathers' to begin mission-work in Uganda. {3162} The religious differences between these two conflicting creeds, which marked the very inauguration of the Roman Catholic mission, much puzzled and confused Mtesa, since both alike called themselves 'Christians.' The Arabs from the coast had already settled in Uganda, and brought with them the religion of Islam. … Mtesa showed great toleration to all creeds, though at one time he had leaned to Mohammedanism, and had ordered all Uganda to embrace that creed. Shortly after, however, as the followers of Islam refused to eat the king's meat because it was not killed in the orthodox way according to the Koran, he ordered the massacre of all Mohammedans. Mtesa died in the autumn of 1884, and Mwanga, then about eighteen years old, succeeded him—being selected from among Mtesa's sons on account of his personal likeness to the late king, since in Uganda paternity is often difficult to prove. At this time the three religions had made great progress, and their disintegrating influences on the old customs began to be more and more apparent. This was especially the case with regard to the Christians, who no longer regarded the king as divine, nor his acts, however gross and cruel, as having a divine sanction. They owned a Higher allegiance, though they remained obedient subjects, and distinguished themselves by bravery in war. Such an attitude was, of course, intolerable to a cruel despot like Mwanga. … There was still a further reason for suspicion and fear of the white men. … The Egyptian flag had been hoisted at Mruli and Fauvera in Unyoro, only just beyond the borders of Uganda, and Gordon's envoys—Colonel Long and Emin—and his troops had penetrated to Mtesa's capital. The Arabs also told of the doings of the Belgians on the Congo. At a later period reports reached Mwanga of German annexations in Usagara on the East Coast. Last, and most disturbing of all, was the news of Mr. Thomson's arrival near Usoga in the East—the route from the coast by which native tradition said that the conquerors of Uganda would come. Mwanga had succeeded his father in November 1884. Early in 1885 he determined to stamp out those dangerous religions, Mohammedan and Christian alike, which were disintegrating his country. The missionaries Mackay and Ashe, were seized, and their followers persecuted. But the religion spread the more. A plot to depose Mwanga was discovered and crushed. With varying fortunes—sometimes treated leniently, sometimes the victims of violent persecution—the missionaries held their own till the autumn of 1885. Then came news of Bishop Hannington's approach." Unhappily the Bishop came by the forbidden Usoga route, and Mwanga ordered that he be killed, with all his men, which was done in October, 1885. "After this the position of the Europeans was very precarious, but not till the following May (1886) did the storm burst. Mwanga then threw aside all restraint, and butchered the Christian converts wholesale. … But in spite of the martyrdom by torture and burning, the religion grew. … The heroism inspired by religion in the early history of our own Church was repeated here in the heart of Africa." At length, in 1888, there was a revolt, in which Christians and Mohammedans seem to have combined, and Mwanga fled to an island at the south of the Lake. His brother Kiwewa was made king, and for a time, the Christians were in control of affairs. But the Mohammedans grew jealous, and by a sudden rising drove the Christians out. Kiwewa refusing to accept the creed of Islam, was deposed, and another brother, Karema, was raised to the throne. The exiled Christians now made overtures to Mwanga, and an alliance was concluded, which resulted in the overthrow of the Mohammedan or Arab party, and the restoration of Mwanga to the throne, in October, 1889. The two Christian factions, Catholic and Protestant, or French and English, divided the country and all the offices of government between them, but were bitterly jealous of each other and perpetually quarreled, while the defeated Mohammedans were still strong and unsubdued. Affairs were in this state when Dr. Peters, the explorer in command of the German "Emin Relief Expedition," came to Uganda, having learned of the rescue of Emin Pasha by Stanley. Dr. Peters, with the aid of the French party, succeeded in arranging some kind of treaty with Mwanga, and this alarmed the Imperial British East Africa Company (see AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1891) when news of it had been received. That alarm was soon increased by intelligence that Emin Pasha had entered the German service and was about to conduct a strong expedition to the south of Lake Victoria Nyanza. These and other circumstances led to the despatching of Captain Lugard with a small force to Uganda to represent the British East Africa Company and establish its influence there. Captain Lugard arrived at Mengo, the capital of Uganda, on the 18th of December, 1890. Meantime Great Britain and Germany, by the Anglo-German Agreement of July 1, 1890 (see AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1891) had settled all questions between them as to their respective "spheres of influence," and Uganda had been definitely placed within the British "sphere." This enabled Captain Lugard to secure the signing of a treaty which recognized the suzerainty of the Company, established its protectorate over Uganda, and conceded to it many important commercial and political powers. He remained in the country until June, 1892, during which time he was driven to take part in a furious war that broke out between the Catholic and Protestant parties. The war ended in a partition of territory between the factions, and three small provinces were, at the same time, assigned to the Mohammedans. After maintaining Captain Lugard and his force in the country for eighteen months, the Company found the cost so heavy and the prospect of returns so distant, that it came to a resolution to withdraw; but was induced by a subscription of £16,000 from the Church Missionary Society to remain for another year in the exercise of the control which it had acquired. At the end of 1892 the Company renewed its resolution to evacuate the region west of Lake Victoria, and the British Government was urgently pressed to take upon itself the administration of the country. It was only persuaded, however, to assume the cost of a further occupation of Uganda for three months by the Company's officers, in order to give more time for ensuring the safety of missionaries and other Europeans. It consented, moreover, to despatch a Commissioner to investigate the situation and report upon it. The official selected for that duty was Sir Gerald Porter, Consul-General at Zanzibar. {3163} Sir Gerald returned to England with his report in December, 1893, and died of typhoid fever in the month following. His report urged the maintenance of an effective control over the government of Uganda, to be exercised directly by the British Government, in the form of a Protectorate, keeping the king on his throne, with a Commissioner at his side to direct his action in all important particulars. After much discussion, the decision of the Government was announced at the beginning of June, 1894. It determined to establish the proposed Protectorate in Uganda, not extending to Unyoro, and to place a Sub-Commissioner on duty between Lake Victoria and the sea, for the purpose of watching over communications, and apparently without political powers. The Government declined to undertake the building of the railway from Mombassa on the coast to the Lake, for which the Imperial British East Africa Company had made surveys.

_Captain F. D. Lugard, The Rise of our East African Empire._

ALSO IN: _Sir Gerald Porter, The British Mission to Uganda in 1893._

_P. L. McDermott, British East Africa, or Ibea. The Spectator, June 9, 1894._

See, also, AFRICAN EXPLORATION, &c., in Supplement.

UGRI.

See HUNGARIANS.

UGRO-FINNISH RACES.

See TURANIAN.

UHILCHES, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: PAMPAS TRIBES.

UIRINA, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: GUCK OR COCO GROUP.

UKASE.

An edict of the Russian government, deriving the force of law from the absolute authority of the Czar.

UKRAINE, The.

See RUSSIA, GREAT, &c.; also COSSACKS.

ULADISLAUS I., King of Poland, A. D. 1083-1102.

Uladislaus II., King of Bohemia, 1471-1516.

Uladislaus II., Duke of Poland, 1138-1146.

Uladislaus III., Duke of Poland, 1296-1333.

Uladislaus IV. (Jagellon), King of Bohemia, 1471-1516; V. of Hungary, 1490-1516.

Uladislaus V. (Jagellon), King of Poland and Duke of Lithuania, 1385-1434.

Uladislaus VI., King of Poland, 1434-1444.

Uladislaus VII., King of Poland, 1632-1648.

ULCA, Battle of the (A. D. 488).

See Rom:: A. D. 488-526.

ULEMA.

See SUBLIME PORTE.

ULM: Start--------

ULM: A. D. 1620. Treaty of the Evangelical Union with the Catholic League.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1618-1620.

ULM: A. D. 1702-1704. Taken by the Bavarians and French, and recovered by Marlborough.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1702; and 1704.

ULM: A. D. 1805. Mack's capitulation.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1805 (MARCH-DECEMBER).

ULM: End--------

ULMENES.

See CHILE: THE ARAUCANIANS.

ULSTER, The Plantation of.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1607-1611.

ULSTER TENANT-RIGHT.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1848-1852.

ULTIMA THULE.

See THULE.

ULTRA VIRES.

See LAW, COMMON: A. D. 1846.

ULTRAMONTANE. ULTRAMONTANISM.

The term ultramontane (beyond the mountain) has been used for so long a time in France and Germany to indicate the extreme doctrines of Papal supremacy maintained beyond the Alps—that is, in Italy, and especially at Rome—that it has come to have no other meaning. The ultramontanists in each country are those who make themselves partisans of these doctrines, in opposition to the more independent division of the Roman Catholic Church.

UMBRIANS, The.

"The Umbrians at one time possessed dominion over great part of central Italy. Inscriptions in their language also remain, and manifestly show that they spoke a tongue not alien to the Latin. The irruption of the Sabellian and of the Etruscan nations was probably the cause which broke the power of the Umbrians, and drove them back to a scanty territory between the Æsis, the Rubicon, and the Tiber."

_H. G. Liddell, History of Rome, introduction, section 2._

See, also, ITALY: ANCIENT.

UNALACHTIGOS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: DELAWARES, and ALGONQUIAN FAMILY.

UNAMIS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: DELAWARES, and ALGONQUIAN FAMILY.

UNCIA, The.

See As; also, FOOT, THE ROMAN.

UNCTION.

See CORONATION.

UNDERGROUND RAILROAD.

See SLAVERY, NEGRO: A. D. 1840-1860.

UNELLI, The.

The Unelli were one of the Armorican tribes of ancient Gaul. Their country was "the Cotantin of the ante-revolutionary period, the present department of Manche."

_G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 4, chapter 6._

UNIFORMITY, Acts of.

Two Acts of Uniformity were passed by the English Parliament in the reign of Edward VI. (1548 and 1552), both of which were repealed under Mary. In 1559, the second year of Elizabeth, a more thorough-going law of the same nature was enacted, by the provisions of which, " (1) the revised Book of Common Prayer as established by Edward VI. in 1552, was, with a few alterations and additions, revised and confirmed. (2) Any parson, vicar, or other minister, whether beneficed or not, wilfully using any but the established liturgy, was to suffer, for the first offence, six months' imprisonment, and, if beneficed, forfeit the profits of his benefice for a year; for the second offence, a year's imprisonment; for the third, imprisonment for life. (3) All persons absenting themselves, without lawful or reasonable excuse, from the service at their parish church on Sundays and holydays, were to be punished by ecclesiastical censures and a fine of one shilling for the use of the poor."

_T. P. Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History, chapter 12._

See, also, ENGLAND: A. D. 1559.

In 1662 soon after the Restoration, another Act of Uniformity was passed, the immediate effect of which was to eject about 2,000 ministers from the established Church.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1662-1665.

UNIGENITUS, The Bull.

See PORT ROYAL, AND THE JANSENISTS: A. D.1702-1715.

UNION, The German Protestant (17th Century).

See GERMANY: A. D. 1608-1618.

UNION JACK.

The national flag of Great Britain and Ireland, uniting the red cross of St. George and the diagonal crosses of St. Andrew and St. Patrick, on a blue ground.

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UNION LEAGUE, The.

A secret political society formed in the United States soon after the outbreak of the American Civil War, having for its object a closer and more effective organization of the supporters of the national government. It was very large in numbers for a time, but declined as the need of such an organization disappeared.

UNION OF BRUSSELS.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1577-1581.

UNION OF CALMAR, The.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1018-1397; and 1397-1527.

UNION OF HEILBRONN, The.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1632-1634.

UNION OF UTRECHT, The.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1577-1581.

UNITARIANISM.

"In its restricted sense Unitarianism means belief in the personal unity of God instead of in a community of divine persons. … Among the articles of Unitarian faith so understood, besides the doctrine of one supreme divine person, may be enumerated belief in human nature, in moral freedom, in human reason, in character as of more worth than ritual or creed, in the equal justice not to say mercy of God, in the unreality of a devil, not to say of evil, and in the ultimate salvation, or evolution into something better, of all souls. Without being in any sense the first article of the faith, either in the historical order as having been the starting-point, or in the logical order as underlying the whole system, or in the order of importance as being with us the doctrine of doctrines, it has happened in spite of a thousand protests that belief in God's personal unity has given its name to the entire confession. The movement first called Socinian, then Arminian, and finally Unitarian, began as a protest of the 'natural man' against two particularly hateful doctrines of Calvinism, that of total depravity and that of predestination."

_S. C. Beach, Unitarianism and the Reformation (Unitarianism: its Origin and History)._

"The establishment of distinct Unitarian churches in England dates back to 1774, when Theophilus Lindsey left the Church of England and went up to London to start the first avowedly Unitarian place of worship in the country. But that was not the beginning of Unitarianism. Centuries before this, Unitarianism began in England as an individual opinion, had first its martyr-age, then a period when it was a great ferment of controversy, and finally the distinct development of it which stands today in our English Unitarian body. The names of some of the Unitarian martyrs on the continent of Europe are comparatively well known,—Servetus, burned by Calvin; Valentine Gentilis the Italian; and other isolated students here and there, who had been stirred up by the Reformation spirit to read the Bible for themselves, and who could not stop where Luther and Calvin stopped. … What is called the 'era of toleration' began immediately after the overthrow of the Stuarts in 1688. The sects were now at liberty to go quietly on in their own way. On the one hand there was the great established Episcopal Church,—at a pretty low ebb in religious life, for its most earnest life had gone out of it on that 'black Bartholomew's Day, 1662,' when the two thousand Puritan clergy were ejected.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1662-1665.

On the other hand were these Puritans,—'Dissenters' they began now to be called,—divided into three great sects, Baptists, Independents, and English Presbyterians. Now, these were all free. They could build churches, and they did. From 1693 to 1720 was the great 'chapel'-building time. … But now, in this great development of chapel-building by these three denominations, a curious thing took place, which unexpectedly affected their after history. That curious thing was, that while the Baptists and Independents (or Congregationalists) tied down all these new chapels to perpetual orthodox uses by rigid doctrinal trust-deeds, … the English Presbyterians left theirs free. It seems strange that they should do so; for the Presbyterians had begun by being the narrowest sect of the Puritans, and the Scotch Presbyterians always remained so. But the English Presbyterians had very little to do with the Scotch ones, and through all the changes and sufferings they had had to go through they had become broadened; and so it carne to pass that now, when they were building their churches or chapels up and down the country, they left them free. … The English Presbyterians, thus left free, began to grow more liberal. … A general reverence for Christ took the place of the old distinct belief in his deity. … They opened the communion to all; they no longer insisted on the old professions of 'church-membership,' but counted all who worshipped with them 'the church.' Thus things were going on all through the middle of the last century. Of course it was not the same everywhere; some still held the old views. … One man among them, … Dr. Joseph Priestley, … was one of the leading scientists of his time,—a restless investigator, and at the same time an earnest religious thinker and student, just as eager to make out the truth about religion as to investigate the properties of oxygen or electricity. So he investigated Christianity, studied the creeds of the churches, came to the conclusion that they were a long way from the Christianity of Christ, and gradually came to be a thoroughgoing Unitarian. When he came to this conclusion he did not hide it; he proclaimed it and preached it. … The upshot of it was, that at length he aroused a large part of the body to the consciousness that they were really Unitarians. They still did not take the name; they disliked sect-names altogether. … And so, though they mostly continued to call themselves English Presbyterians, or simply Presbyterians, all the world began to call them Unitarians; and more and more the Baptists and Independents, or Congregationalists, who had formerly fellowshipped and worked with them, drew apart, and left them, as they are to-day, in the reluctant isolation of a separate Unitarian body. Two other movements of thought of a somewhat similar kind increased and strengthened this development of a separate Unitarian body,—one among the General Baptists, the other in the great Episcopal Church itself."

_B. Herford, Unitarianism in England (Unitarianism: its Origin and History)._

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