“Wondering with an Unending Wonder”: Remarks on Ham Mukasa's Journey to England in 1902

Abstract

Stephen Greenblatt has shown that wonder was the central characteristic of the first European encounters with the New World and the decisive emotional and intellectual experience in the face of radical difference (Greenblatt 1994:27). Wonder, says Greenblatt, appears to be a category immune to all denial and ideological co-optation, and it exerts an irresistible force. It occurs in a moment when meanings are lacking and is accompanied by the fragmentation of contextual understanding (Greenblatt 1994:33).Wonder was already an essential topic of discourses in philosophy and art even before the voyages of discovery (Matuschek 1991); thus, for Socrates, philosophy begins with astonishment and wonder, and the art of poetry intends the creation of the wondrous (Greenblatt 1994:33). Greenblatt argues that the frequency and intensity with which European discoverers of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries referred to the experience of the wondrous provoked its conceptual elucidation (Greenlbatt 1994:34). The colonization of the wondrous began; and astonishment became a means of appropriation and subjugation (Greenblatt 1994:42).By the nineteenth century, the century of European journeys of discovery in Africa, wonder had been used up. English, French, and German travelers no longer wondered about anything. Their glance had achieved a confidence that allowed them to objectify and take possession of what was foreign to them. It was now the various Others, the objects of their glance, to whom they imputed the wonder they themselves were no longer capable of.

“When the Kalmyks saw me, they thought I was their black devil”: Inverting Centres and Peripheries in Colonial Travelogues Written by East Africans

“…Ham Mukasa was a chieftain's son who had been raised as a page at the royal court and who at the time of travel was acting as secretary to the Bugandan prime minister and regent, Sir Apolo Kagwa, who represented the child king of Buganda, Daudi Chwa. Both Apolo Kagwa and Ham Mukasa were Anglican converts and both had written extensively in Luganda on Bugandan history and biblical theology (Kahyana 2018;Behrend 1998). They were formally invited to attend the coronation ceremony in the capital of the empire along with many other representatives from the realm.…”

“…The alignment of Ham Mukasa and Apolo Kagwa with British Anglicanism and British culture is very apparent in the narrative, and this attitude was heavily criticised by later generations fighting for the independence of Uganda. But reading the text closely, it is clear that Ham Mukasa's express intention of learning from the British follows from his wish to develop a new type of civilisation for his home country (Behrend 1998;Lo Liyong 1975):…”

“…Not all travelogues make use of the stylistic tool of 'wonder' in the same way. Amur bin Nasur is overwhelmed and slightly taken aback by theatres, circuses, museums, pubs and zoos, while Ham Mukasa wholeheartedly admires the intricacies of factory production (Behrend 1998).…”