This work is not the first to consider the political history of an African stateless society, but it is the first to do so in a span which covers both the pre-colonial and colonial eras. Its subject is the Langi, one of Uganda's major peoples. The book focuses primarily on the changing forms of political leadership - from the highly informal and parochial clan leadership of the nineteenth century to the powerful, bureaucratic chiefship through which the Langi were administered during the early twentieth century. How this kind of chiefship, so alien to the egalitarian values of the indigenous culture, was established in Lango is a theme which also sheds light on British colonial administration during the heyday of 'Indirect Rule'.