This chapter introduces the book as the first comprehensive analysis of the historical, political, and socioeconomic context that produced the National Resistance Movement (NRM) regime in Uganda. It situates Uganda’s post-1986 trajectory within the broader continental legacies of colonial rule, emphasizing how arbitrary partitioning, the imposition of alien institutions, and the privileging of select groups fostered weak legitimacy, entrenched ethnic cleavages, and authoritarian governance across postcolonial Africa. These structural weaknesses, compounded by Cold War rivalries and externally imposed economic reforms, precipitated state collapse and conflict across the continent during the 1970s–1990s. Against a backdrop of postcolonial fragility, conflict, and structural weakness across Africa, Uganda under the NRM achieved relative stability and regime resilience through a distinctive civil-authoritarian order. The chapter introduces the book’s theoretical framework of residual social structures to explain how entrenched societal actors—monarchies, churches, landed elites, and legacy political parties—survived decades of upheaval continue to constrain authoritarian consolidation, shape governance strategies, and underpin the durability of the NRM regime.