1900s–1930s: (Politicized Peasant Consciousness in Uganda — Cotton Production Spreading Through the South, Tenant Farmers Resenting Absentee Chiefly Landlord…

1900s–1930s: (Politicized Peasant Consciousness in Uganda — Cotton Production Spreading Through the South, Tenant Farmers Resenting Absentee Chiefly Landlords, the 1928 Rent Ceiling, Cotton Producers Aggrieved at Indian Merchant Marketing Monopolies, Populist Trade-Union-Like Groups Emerging in the 1930s, and Fear of East African Federation Making Uganda Another Kenya): Politicized peasant consciousness was also evident in Uganda, where cotton production had spread across the south between the early 1900s and the 1920s. Tenant farmers grew increasingly resentful of a chiefly class of absentee landlords who charged high rents — in 1928 the colonial authorities stepped in to place a ceiling on the rents chiefs could impose. Cotton producers were also aggrieved at marketing arrangements that favored Indian merchants and a small number of large companies behind them. In Kenya as well as Uganda, a burgeoning Asian business community fulfilled the same role as European buyers in West Africa, and Ugandan farmers were increasingly resentful of their exclusion from cotton marketing. During the 1930s, populist groups of an almost trade-union nature appeared, lobbying for closer monitoring of tenant-landlord relations and greater power in the marketplace. This kind of economic grievance laid the foundations for later political protest — the Indian community remained economically powerful until Idi Amin imposed his brutal expulsion of Ugandan Asians in the early 1970s. Political activity in Uganda was also provoked by talk of an East African federation linking Uganda, Kenya, and Tanganyika, with Ugandans fearing their territory might become another Kenya — a settler colony where African interests were systematically subordinated to white privilege.