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Anthony Low is surely right in urging students of modern African politics to probe deeper into African society and culture than they have been accustomed to do. In part because of the speed with which political events have unfolded during the past decade – making it difficult enough just to keep up with day-to-day events – and in part because of the disjunction between traditional socio-cultural groupings and modern political boundaries – making it easy to believe that the former are irrelevant to the latter – much recent writing on African affairs, even when "well informed", has been exceedingly superficial. Low's work on Buganda, including especially his sensitive study of Ganda-British relations during the early years of the Protectorate, stands as an admirable exception. Both in the earlier studies and in his present analysis of populism, twentieth-century Baganda are shown to act in ways, and out of sentiments, that are understandably related both to contemporary circumstances and to the Ganda past.

Throughout the history of economics the stranger everywhere appears as the trader, or the trader as stranger. As long as the economy is essentially selfsufficient, or products are exchanged within a spatially narrow group, it needs no middleman: a trader is required only for products that originate outside the group. Insofar as members do not leave the circle to buy these necessities — in which case they are the "strange" merchants in that outside territory — the trader must be a stranger … This position of the stranger stands out more sharply if he settles down in the place of his activity, instead of leaving it again: in innumerable cases even this is possible only if he can live by intermediate trade… This position of the stranger stands out more sharply if he settles down in the place of his activity, instead of leaving it again: in innumerable cases even this is possible only if he can live by intermediate trade… The stranger is by nature no "owner of the soil" — soil not only in the physical but also in the figurative sense of a life-substance which is fixed, if not in a point in space, at least at an ideal point of the social environment. Although in more intimate relations he may develop all kinds of charm and significance, as long as he is considered a stranger in the eyes of the other, he is not an "owner of soil"… Another expression of this constellation lies in the objectivity of the stranger. He is not radically committed to the unique ingredients and peculiar tendencies of the group, and therefore approaches them with the specific attitude of "objectivity". But objectivity does not imply passivity and detachment; it is a particular structure composed of distance and nearness, indifference and involvement … The freedom, however, which allows the stranger to experience and treat even his close relationships as though from a birds-eye view, contains many dangerous possibilities. In uprisings of all sorts, the party attacked has claimed, from the beginning of things, that provocation has come from the outside, from emissaries and instigators.