ms in the regions south of the Sahara quickly became predominant throughout much of the middle part of the continent. One of the strongest of these states was Ghana, which was in commercial contact with the Muslim centers of the Mediterranean world through the Sahara. As a result of this contact, Islam spread into the region and the successor states to Ghana's predominance usually had Muslim rulers. This situation was repeated in Eastern Africa, whose inhabitants were in close contact with the Muslim Arab states (Bennett, 1984, pp. 6-10).
States in the more central parts of the continent evolved without such contact with the Muslim states to the north. The Lwo-speaking people of Bunyoro and Buganda, located just north of Lake Victoria, evolved into centralized semi-feudal states. Buganda was divided into counties, each administered by an official who was at the head of a hierarchy which extended down to the village chiefs. Each official in this hierarchy was personally responsible to the official above him. Most of the chiefs were appointed by the Kabaka, or ruler of Buganda, and could be dismissed by him at will. Thus, the kabaka had power over every detail of administration in the state (Bennett, 1984, pp. 10-12).
Other African states, however, were not so centralized. The Lugbara of northern Uganda, for example, governed themselves through the use of lineage councils. Open discussions, the weight of elders' thoughts, and the force of public opinion combined to form the binding force of political life. The people of these states were usually most concerned with parochial matters involving their homesteads and villages; matters of broader concern were usually left to discussions involving groups which represented the various scattered settlements of the entire culture group (Bennett, 1984, pp. 12-13).
With the expansion of European commercial trade in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, contact between Europea...