The Evolution of Ethnicity among the Acholi of Uganda: The Precolonial Phase

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

This paper traces the evolution of an Acholi ethnic identity in northcentral Uganda. The main argument is that this evolution began in the late seventeenth century with the establishment of a new sociopolitical order in the region characterized most importantly by chiefly forms of organization. This was followed by language shift on a large scale and then, during the second half of the nineteenth century, by the introduction of a new collective term of identification by Arabic-speaking traders from the north. This new term was Shooli, eventually transformed into Acholi.