Winner of the 2011 African Studies Association Herskovits Award

Beyond the Royal Gaze shifts the perspective from which we view early African politics by asking what Buganda, a kingdom located on the northwest shores of Lake Victoria in present-day Uganda, looked like to people who were not of the center but nevertheless became central to its functioning. Drawing on insights from a variety of disciplines--history, historical linguistics, archaeology, and anthropology--Neil Kodesh argues that the domains of politics and public healing were intimately entwined in Buganda...