Popular History of Idi Amin's Uganda

Derek Peterson is the Ali Mazrui Professor of History and African Studies at the University of Michigan. His books include Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent and The Unseen Archive of Idi Amin. He lives in Ann Arbor, MI.

“Peterson, an expert archivist, has created, from heaps of file folders, magnetic tapes, and other materials recovered from abandoned storage rooms around the country, what is probably the largest organized repository of government documents anywhere in Africa. . . . This was heroic work. . . . The details of what they found, and especially what they didn’t find, are fascinating.”—Helen Epstein, New York Review of Books“A welcome revision to the sensationalism that usually accompanies Amin. With unprecedented access to previously inaccessible sources—many of which Peterson has helped salvage from administrative neglect and environmental ruination.”—Jonathon L. Earle, History Today“This is a highly empathetic work which dives deeply into individual lives and motivations with nuance.”—Harriet Aldrich, BBC History Magazine“Derek Peterson does it again, taking a topic we thought we knew—Amin’s dictatorship—and making us see it anew. Using provincial archives that he and his team saved from damp, insects, and mold, he tells a riveting tale of how clerks, curators, radio personnel, artists, priests, and teachers strove to make Amin’s government work. They were not the torturers and interrogators, of which there were many, but provincial patriots inspired by Amin’s anti-colonial message.”—Isabel Hofmeyr, author of Dockside Reading: Hydrocolonialism and the Custom House“This book is the impressive outcome of dogged and granular archival work over many years. Peterson has made a welcome—and timely—contribution to our understanding of this most complex period in Uganda’s modern history.”—Richard Reid, author of A History of Modern Uganda“Peterson sheds light on the popular foundations of the flamboyant Idi Amin’s violent rule. Carefully researched, this book provides remarkable insights into how and why Amin inspired and mobilized ordinary Ugandans, with important lessons for understanding the appeals of contemporary demagogues. It contributes to a more nuanced perspective on this important and controversial figure.”—William Reno, author of Warlord Politics and African States“How did Idi Amin’s regime survive? Peterson shows how many people in Uganda were earnestly committed to what they saw as a project of liberation—despite the appalling atrocities of the time. This book is a thoughtful and timely account of the ability of demagogues to mobilize popular support.”—Justin Willis, coauthor of The Moral Economy of Elections in Africa: Democracy, Voting and Virtue“Do cartoonish political figures deserve revisions? Can anything be gained by looking for the worthy in the grotesque? This is a fearsome question for the twenty-first century but is one Derek Peterson meets head on with great skill and compassion. His book about Idi Amin—the postcolonial epitome of western ideas about Africa savagery—is not a rehabilitation but a literal relocation, situating Amin in the places and populations in both the global spaces of Pan-Africanism and Uganda to which he gave a new and aggressive voice.”—Luise White, author of Unpopular Sovereignty: Rhodesian Independence and African Decolonization