Bringing the peasants back in: Agrarian themes in the construction and corrosion of statist historiography in Rwanda

American Historical Review

Volumn 105, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 832-876

  Newbury, David ^a   Newbury, Catharine ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0007630740     PISSN: 00028762     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2651812     Document Type: Review

References (441)

1. Andrew J. Shyrock, "Popular Genealogical Nationalism: History Writing and Identity among the Balqa Tribes of Jordan," Comparative Studies in Society and History 37 (1995): 334.
2. Quoted in Jan Vansina, Children of Woot: A History of the Kuba Peoples (Madison, Wis., 1978), 19.
3. Rwanda provides one of the most extensive bibliographies of any region of Africa of comparable size; the authoritative bibliography of published written works (to 1980) includes over 5,500 entries in the social sciences alone: Marcel d'Hertefelt and Danielle de Lame, Société, culture, et histoire du Rwanda: Encyclopédie bibliographique, 2 vols. (Tervuren, 1987).
4. Preferring to concentrate on more foundational sources, we have omitted from explicit consideration several recent historical surveys: Roger Heremans, Introduction à l'histoire du Rwanda (Kigali, 1988);
5. Jean Rumiya, Le Rwanda sous le régime du mandat Belge (Paris, 1992);
6. Ferdinand Nahimana, Le Rwanda: Emergence d'un état (Paris, 1993);
7. e siècles à 1958 (Paris, 1994);
8. Antoine Nyagahene, Histoire et peuplement: Ethnicités, clans, et lignages dans le Rwanda ancien et contemporain (Paris, 1997);
9. Bernard Lugan, Histoire du Rwanda (Paris, 1997);
10. C. M. Overdulve, Rwanda: Un peuple avec une histoire (Paris, 1997).
11. For a comprehensive overview of studies on peasants in Africa, see Allen Isaacman, "Peasants and Rural Protest in Africa," African Studies Review 33 (1990): 1-120 (also reproduced in Cooper et al. cited below).
12. Among many other works on African peasantries, see Martin Klein, Peasants in Africa (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1980);
13. Stephen Bunker, Peasants against the State: The Politics of Market Control in Bugisu, Uganda, 1900-1983 (Chicago, 1987);
14. Jonathan Barker, Rural Communities under Stress: Peasant Farmers and the State in Africa (Cambridge, 1989);
15. Steven Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania (Madison, Wis., 1990);
16. Sara Berry, No Condition Is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Saharan Africa (Madison, 1993);
17. Colin Bundy, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry (Berkeley, Calif., 1979);
18. William Beinart and Colin Bundy, Hidden Struggles in Rural South Africa (Berkeley, 1987);
19. Charles van Onselen, The Seed Is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, a South African Sharecropper, 1894-1985 (New York, 1996).
20. For general studies of peasants and peasants in areas outside Africa, see Frederick Cooper, Allen F. Isaacman, Florencia E. Mallon, William Roseberry, and Steve J. Stern, Confronting Historical Paradigms: Peasants, Labor, and the Capitalist World System in Africa and Latin America (Madison, 1993);
21. James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant (New Haven, Conn., 1976);
22. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, 1985);
23. William Roseberry, Anthropologies and Histories: Essays on Culture, History, and Political Economy (New Brunswick, N.J., 1984);
24. Florencia E. Mallon, Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley, 1995);
25. Steve J. Stern, Resistance, Rebellion and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World (Madison, 1987).
26. This point has been made convincingly by many observers; for one statement, see Elizabeth Colson, "The Impact of the Colonial Period on the Definition of Land Rights," in Victor Turner, ed., Colonialism in Africa, 1870-1960, Vol. 3: Profiles of Change: African Society and Colonial Rule, (Cambridge, 1971), 193-215.
27. For a Latin American perspective on such issues - differing from that adopted here - see Michael Kearney, Reconceptualizing the Peasantry: Anthropology in Global Perspective (Boulder, Colo., 1996).
28. While there have been some exceptions (notably in Kenyan studies), in general the legacy of Chayanov has not been prominent in African studies, nor have African examples been represented in the premier journal of the field, the Journal of Peasant Studies, in proportion to their historical importance. The significance of Chayanov's studies for the Journal of Peasant Studies was reconfirmed in the symposium "Aleksandr Chayanov and Russian Berlin," Frank Bourgholtzer, ed., Journal of Peasant Studies 26 (1999).
29. For Chayanov's work, see Daniel Thorner, Basile Kerblay, and R. E. F. Smith, eds., A. V. Chayanov on the Theory of Peasant Economy (Madison, Wis., 1986).
30. For an introduction, see Ranajit Guha and Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak, eds., Selected Subaltern Studies (London, 1988);
31. Ranajit Guha, ed., A Subaltern Studies Reader, 1986-1995 (Minneapolis, 1997);
32. and the journal Subaltern Studies. The term "Subaltern Studies" derives from a concern with the issue of how elite classes came to define the culture, including the vision of history, of the non-elite classes of society. See Guha, "Introduction," A Subaltern Studies Reader, xiv-xvi.
33. The first attempt to probe these questions systematically was Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, eds. (New York, 1971).
34. While Gramsci's entire project to some extent dealt with the problems of defining and deciphering subaltern histories, these issues were most explicitly addressed in the chapter "Notes on Italian History: History of Subaltern Classes; Methodological Criteria," 52-55. Gramsci of course was mostly concerned with class dynamics in an industrializing Italy; nevertheless, his observations provide useful methodological insights for the study of peasants in colonial and postcolonial contexts. In particular, it is worth noting Gramsci's acknowledgment of the challenges of such analysis: "the history of subaltern groups is necessarily fragmented and episodic . . . Subaltern groups are always subject to the activity of ruling groups, even when they rebel and rise up . . . , even when they appear triumphant the subaltern groups are merely anxious to defend themselves." And finally he warns us (p. 55): "This kind of history can only be dealt with monographically and each monograph requires an immense quantity of material which is often hard to collect." Further discussion on these issues is found in the three contributions to the AHR Forum cited in note 10, and (among many others) in David Arnold, "Gramsci and Peasant Subalternity in India," Journal of Peasant Studies 112 (1989): 155-77;
35. T. J. Jackson Lears, "The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities," AHR 91 (June 1985): 567-93.
36. The most explicit application of the subaltern studies paradigms to Africa is Frederick Cooper, "Conflict and Connection: Rethinking African Historiography," AHR 99 (December 1994): 1516-45.
37. This was part of a larger forum on subaltern studies, including Gyan Prakash, "Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism" on South Asian historiography,
38. Florencia Mallon, "The Promise and Dilemma of Subaltern Studies: Perspectives from Latin American History," AHR 99 (December 1994).
39. In a recent analysis of the history of Nyabingi healers in northern Rwanda and southwestern Uganda, Steven Feierman notes that, in many cases, a concern with hegemonic power has led analysts to depreciate and undervalue the continuing importance of local initiatives. He proposes an approach to historical reconstruction that can unveil subaltern discourses and practices rendered "invisible" by the changes of colonialism and capitalism: Feierman, "Colonizers, Scholars, and the Creation of Invisible Histories," in Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt, eds., Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (Berkeley, Calif., 1999), 182-216.
40. In the 1950s, Rwanda's population was classified into three principal social categories: Hutu constituted about 85 percent of the population, Tutsi about 14 percent, and Twa less than 1 percent. Strong racial, cultural, and historical stereotypes were associated with each of these categories, stereotypes we discuss below. Although these categories existed from precolonial times, their political salience changed during colonial rule, with the establishment of a clear ethnic hierarchy in the minds of Belgian administrators. Early accounts clearly show great regional variability and temporal flexibility among these categories, yet these images of "ethnicity" came to be accepted even by many within Rwanda, and by the end of colonial rule ethnic stratification had become a strong feature of Rwandan social reality. For a discussion of this process for one region of Rwanda, see Catharine Newbury, The Cohesion of Oppression: Clientship and Ethnicity in Rwanda, 1860-1960 (New York, 1988).
41. Many works portray Rwanda in these terms, but the most prominent among them is Jacques-Jean Maquet, Le système des relations sociales dans le Ruanda ancien (Tervuren, 1954).
42. The intellectual premise of this study was constructed in the late 1940s; for commentary on the research strategies and assumptions behind this work, see Alexis Kagame, Le code des institutions politiques de l'ancien Rwanda (Brussels, 1952), 12.
43. Kagame notes that Maquet drew up his list of informants at the central court and designed his questionnaire with Kagame's guidance. It is therefore not surprising that Kagame noted that Maquet's results "validated" his own. (Maquet, however, omits these details in his discussion of method). Translated into English as The Premise of Inequality in Ruanda: A Study of Political Relations in a Central African Kingdom (London, 1961)
44. at a time of the efflorescence of British structural-functional anthropology in Africa, and with the imprimatur of the International African Institute, Maquet's work became one of the iconic works of Anglophone scholarship in Africa. Even fifty years after the research on which this book was based, many today still uncritically accept this as a valid source for Rwandan society and history. That is analogous to scholars of the 1960s drawing on intellectual frameworks dating from before World War I; such a lapse would be inconceivable in most fields, since the methods, data, and conceptual understanding of African research have seen as profound a transformation over the last fifty years as in the previous fifty. For a critique of Maquet, see C. Newbury, Cohesion of Oppression, chap. 1. On Kagame's broader role in the construction of a hegemonic historiography, see notes 38 and 56 below.
45. Not all general commentaries on Rwanda share the popular imagery noted here, but most concentrate on ethnicity, kingship, conflict, and clientship as fixed historical categories. In doing so, they ignore much of the research of the last thirty years, which presents important new contours to historical understanding; for an early overview, see Chubaka Bishikwabo and David Newbury, "Recent Research in the Area of Lake Kivu: Rwanda and Zaire," History in Africa 7 (1980): 23-35.
46. Especially prominent among the general histories of Rwanda were Alexis Kagame, Un abrégé de l'ethnohistoire du Rwanda, vol. 1 (Butare, 1972);
47. Kagame, Un abrégé de l'histoire du Rwanda, vol. 2 (Butare, 1975).
48. The idealized description of Rwandan aristocratic classes frequently drew on racial terminology. For a notorious example of such glorified imagery, see Paul del Perugia, Les derniers rois mages (Paris, 1978).
49. In a manner typical of the early works on Rwandan history, Louis de Lacger describes Tutsi in the chapter "Les Batutsi, une branche des couches kouschites, ethiopiens, ou hamites." Absent any empirical data, he - like so many others of his day - conjoined race, culture, and history, drawing on selective physiological traits to postulate a sweeping historical narrative encompassing thousands of miles and thousands of years. De Lacger notes that the Greeks, Romans, and Arabs all described these "Hamites," and continues: "Arriving in Rwanda from upper Egypt or the Abyssinian highlands, one recognizes [the Tutsi] immediately. One had already seen these men of tall stature, . . . with slender bodies and long lanky limbs, well-proportioned features, and a noble, serious, and haughty demeanor. These are the brothers of the Nubians [in Sudan], the Galla [Somalia], the Danakil [Eritrea]. They have Caucasian features and resemble the Semites of Asia Minor. But their coloring is black, sometimes bronze or olive; their hair is curly . . . Before becoming black, these men were bronze in color." He then traces their emigration from Kush on the upper Nile to Egypt and then Ethiopia. Subsequently, he notes the presence of a "continuous pastoral avenue" from Ethiopia to Lake Kivu, which allowed these people to migrate to the Great Lakes region "without having to leave their ecological milieu." De Lacger, Le Ruanda (1939; Kabgayi, 1961), 56-57.
50. On the reasoning behind these figures, see Helen Codere, The Biography of an African Society: Rwanda, 1900-1960 (Tervuren, 1973), 70.
51. For a consideration of regional differences, see below. For sources, see notes 23-26 and 43-45.
52. For an elaboration of the concepts of dual colonialism and local agency under colonial rule, see C. Newbury, Cohesion of Oppression;
53. and Jean-Baptiste Rushatsi, "Monarchie nyiginya et pouvoirs européens: Le nord et le nord-ouest du Rwanda sous un double colonisation, 1894-1916" (PhD dissertation, Université Catholique de Louvain, 1994).
54. For commentaries on the Twa, see José Kagabo and Vincent Mudandagizi, "Complaintes des gens de l'argile: Les Twa du Rwanda," Cahiers d'études africaines 14 (1974): 75-87;
55. de Lacger, Le Ruanda;
56. Jean-Claude Desmarais, "Les Twa du Rwanda: Du social au biologique," L'informateur 8 (1975): 62-64.
57. Classic sources on the Twa include Paul Schebesta, Les Pygmées du Congo belge (Brussels, 1952);
58. Peter Schumacher, "Die expedition des P. P. Schumacher zu den Zentralafrikanischen Kivu-Pygmäen in Ruanda," Anthropos 22 (1927): 289-90, 530-49;
59. Peter Schumacher, Anthropos 23 (1928): 395-435.
60. These themes have been considered in greater detail in David Newbury, "The Invention of Rwanda: The Alchemy of Ethnicity" (paper presented at the African Studies Association, Orlando, 1995);
61. David Newbury, "Rwanda and Burundi: A Precolonial Overview" (paper presented to the conference on Central African History, Oxford University, July 1995);
62. David Newbury, Kings and Clans: Ijwi Island and the Lake Kivu Rift, 1780-1840 (Madison, Wis., 1991).
63. Some exceptions include Pierre Smith, Le récit populaire (Paris, 1975);
64. Luc de Heusch, Rois nés d'un coeur de vache (Paris, 1982);
65. Codere, Biography;
66. and especially the massive collection of transcribed texts of Jan Vansina, "Ibiteekerezo: Historical Narratives from Rwanda" (Chicago, Center for Research Libraries).
67. The point of departure was Jan Vansina, L'évolution du royaume Rwanda des origines à 1900 (Brussels, 1962);
68. the methodological premises were first laid out in Vansina, De la tradition orale: Essai de méthode historique (Tervuren, 1961).
69. For other studies drawing extensively on oral sources, see (among other examples) Claudine Vidal, "Economie de la société féodale rwandaise," Cahiers d'études africaines 14 (1974): 52-75 (on labor and ethnicity);
70. Alison Des Forges, "Defeat Is the Only Bad News: Rwanda under Musinga, 1906-1931" (PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1972), on colonial rule and court politics;
71. C. Newbury, Cohesion of Oppression, on clientship, colonialism, ethnicity, and the state;
72. Jim Freedman, Nyabingi: The Social History of an African Divinity (Tervuren, 1984), on local religious practices;
73. Codere, Biography, on biographies, including women's biographies;
74. Danielle de Lame, Une colline entre mille ou le calme avant la tempête: Transformations et blocages du Rwanda rural (Tervuren, 1996),
75. a comprehensive cultural study of a local community, with a focus on political economy. For a general overview and assessment of social research over the first twenty years of postcolonial Rwanda, see Bishikwabo and Newbury, "Recent Research."
76. On the development and debates of oral historiography in Africa, David Newbury, "Contradictions at the Heart of the Canon: Oral Historiography in Africa 1960-1980" (paper presented to the conference on Oral Historiography in Africa, Bellagio, February 1997).
77. Surveys of colonial Rwanda that emphasize these themes include René Lemarchand, Rwanda and Burundi (London, 1970);
78. Ian Linden with Jane Linden, Church and Revolution in Rwanda (Manchester, 1977);
79. Filip Reyntjens, Pouvoir et droit au Rwanda (Tervuren, 1985);
80. Rumiya, Le Rwanda.
81. Jan Czekanowski, Forschungen im Nil-Kongo-Zwischengebiet (Leipzig, 1917).
82. Such perspectives were also present in the important work of Peter Schumacher, "P. Schumachers Aufzeichnungen: Ruanda," Micro-Bibliotecha Anthropos, vol. 28A, 1958, Anthropos-Institut, St. Augustin bei Bonn, Germany.
83. Also see Richard Kandt, Caput Nili (Berlin, 1921);
84. on Kandt in Rwanda, see Reinhart Bindseil, Ruanda und Deutschland seit den Tagen Richard Kandts (Berlin, 1987).
85. Albert Pagès, Au Ruanda, sur les bords du lac Kivu (Congo belge): Un royaume hamite au centre de l'Afrique (Brussels, 1933).
86. De Lacger, Ruanda.
87. On the deposition of Musinga, see de Lacger, Ruanda, 525-42;
88. Des Forges, "Defeat Is the Only Bad News," chaps. 8-9, esp. 349-54;
89. Ferdinand Nahimana, Le blanc est arrivé: Le roi est parti (Kigali, 1987);
90. Rumiya, Le Rwanda, 169-89.
91. The Catholic prelate of the day, Mgr. Léon Classe, had a powerful influence on the decision to depose Musinga, who was rusticated in part for his "anti-Christian" and "amoralistic" views; de Lacger, Ruanda, 525.
92. "Les Missionnaires d'Afrique" is the formal title of the order. But members of the order are commonly referred to as the "White Fathers," after the long white cassock that characterizes their dress code, modeled on the Muslim attire of North Africa where the order was founded. On the development of the Missionnaires d'Afrique and on mission guidelines, see François Renault, Le Cardinal Lavigerie: L'église, l'Afrique, et la France (Paris, 1992).
93. We lack a comprehensive history of the Missionnaires d'Afrique, but on the early writings of the White Fathers in Rwanda, see R. Heremans, A. Bart, and F. Bart, "Agriculture et paysage Rwandais à travers des sources missionnaires (1900-1950)," Cultures, et développement 14 (1982): 3-39;
94. Roger Heremans and Emmanuel Ntezimana, eds., Journal de la Mission de Save (Rwanda), 1899-1905 (Ruhengeri, 1987).
95. On broader aspects, see François Renault, Lavigerie, l'esclavage, et l'Europe, 2 vols. (Paris, 1971);
96. Roger Heremans, L'éducation dans les missions des Pères Blancs en Afrique centrale, 1879-1914 (Brussels, 1983).
97. German policy was first forged in Burundi. But the attitudes adopted there were applicable with even greater force to Rwanda, because in the late nineteenth century Rwanda was much more centralized and the royal court had much more power within its central sphere of influence than was true for Burundi. For Burundi, see Joseph Gahama, Le Burundi sous administration Belge (Paris, 1984);
98. Hans Meyer, Les Barundi (Paris, 1984);
99. Pierre Ryckmans, Une page d'histoire coloniale: L'occupation allemande dans l'Urundi (Brussels, 1953), 6:
100. "Our policy must aim at upholding the authority of the chiefs so that they will be convinced that their well-being . . . depends on their loyalty to the German government." On Rwanda, see Des Forges, "Defeat Is the Only Bad News";
101. Rumiya, Le Rwanda;
102. Nahimana, Le blanc est arrivé.
103. For example, of the five Catholic missions established between 1900 and 1903, four were in areas of opposition to Nyiginya royalty: in addition to Save, not far from the royal court (1900), later missions included Zaza (Gisaka, in the southeast, 1900); Nyundo (Bugoyi, in the northwest, 1901); Rwaza (Mulera in the extreme north, 1903); and Mibirizi (Bukunzi, in the extreme southwest, 1903). Similarly, three of the next four missions were located outside the areas of firmly established court dominance. Because of the conditions of their founding and the requirement of the order that the missionaries keep a daily dairy, these accounts often serve as rich sources for local history; see Heremans and Ntezimana, Mission de Save;
104. Heremans, Bart, and Bart, "Agriculture et paysages";
105. P. Schumacher, "Aufzeichnungen: Ruanda."
106. Alison Des Forges, "Kings without Crowns: The White Fathers in Rwanda," in Daniel McCall, Norman Bennett, and Jeffrey Butler, eds., Eastern Africa History (New York, 1975), 176-207;
107. Des Forges, "Defeat Is the Only Bad News";
108. Linden and Linden, Church and Revolution.
109. While the perceptive quality and the interest in local people and events varied with each observer, the diary of daily events kept at each parish nonetheless provided a valuable window on local events during the early colonial period. Copies are available at the White Fathers archives in Rome. For a published example, see Heremans and Ntezimana, Mission de Save. Also, when used critically and evaluated in context, published works by missionaries such as Albert Pagès, Louis de Lacger, Léon Delmas, Félix Dufays, Marcel Pauwels, and Peter Schumacher provide ample testimony to the value of such observations.
110. For the religious wars of Buganda at the end of the nineteenth century, see Michael Wright, Buganda in the Heroic Age (Nairobi, 1971);
111. C. C. Wrigley, "The Christian Revolution in Buganda," Comparative Studies in Society and History 2 (1959): 33-48;
112. Christopher Wrigley, Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty (Cambridge, 1996);
113. John M. Gray, "The Year of the Three Kings in Buganda, 1888-89," Uganda Journal 14 (1950): 15-52;
114. M. S. M. Semakula Kiwanuka, A History of Buganda to 1900 (London, 1971);
115. D. A. Low, "Conversion, Revolution and the New Regime in Buganda, 1860-1900," in Low, Buganda in Modern History (London, 1971), 13-54;
116. Low, Religion and Society in Buganda, 1875-1900 (Kampala, n.d. [1957]);
117. John Rowe, Lugard at Kampala (Kampala, 1969);
118. Michael Twaddle, Kakungulu and the Creation of Uganda (London, 1993).
119. For histories of the Catholic Church in Rwanda, see Linden and Linden, Church and Revolution;
120. Roger Heremans, "L'arrivée des Pères Blancs au Rwanda," Dialogue, no. 57 (1976): 72-83;
121. Heremans, L'éducation dans les missions des Pères Blancs;
122. Gamaliel Mbonimana, "L'instauration d'un royaume chrétien au Rwanda (1900-1931)" (PhD dissertation, Louvain la Neuve, 1981);
123. Gamaliel Mbonimana, "Christianisation indirecte et cristallisation des clivages ethniques au Rwanda (1925-1931)," Enquêtes et documents d'histoire africaine 3 (1978): 125-63;
124. Justin Kalibwami, Le catholicisme et la société rwandaise 1900-1962 (Paris, 1991);
125. Paul Rutayisire, La christianisation du Rwanda (1900-1945): Méthode missionnaire et politique selon Mgr. Léon Classe (Fribourg, 1987).
126. Pierre Bourdieu, Towards a Theory of Praxis (Cambridge, 1976). More than an "orthodox" history - which implicitly accepts the possibilities of alternative viewpoints - Bourdieu's concept of "doxic" hegemony presumes the delegitimation (or absence) of meaningful alternative visions. It is in this sense that we see the power of the hegemonic view of Rwandan history, which came to combine the Rwandan political elite with the ecclesiastical authorities. Other viewpoints were dismissed as "politically motivated" or simply "local" histories, and therefore not worthy of consideration; the history of rural areas, and of peasants, was simply not considered important.
127. Bernard Lugan, "Causes et effets de la famine 'Rumanura' au Rwanda, 1916-1918," Canadian Journal of African Studies 10 (1976): 347-56;
128. Rumiya, Le Rwanda, 59-74;
129. Nahimana, Le blanc est arrivé, 121-28.
130. For a discussion of this dispute, see Rumiya, Le Rwanda, 81-131.
131. This had not been the only boundary dispute in question. Areas in the west (Ijwi Island) and in the north (Bufumbiro, originally referred to by some as "British Rwanda") were also contested, as parts of the precolonial dynastic domain. William Roger Louis, Ruanda-Urundi: 1884-1919 (Oxford, 1963), esp. 41-92;
132. Elizabeth Hopkins, "The International Boundary as a Factor in the Extension of Colonial Control," in Daniel F. McCall, Norman R. Bennett, and Jeffrey Butler, eds., Eastern African History (New York, 1969), 208-45;
133. Donald Denoon, ed., A History of Kigezi in South-West Uganda (Kampala, 1972).
134. Louis, Ruanda-Urundi;
135. David Newbury, "The Rwakayihura Famine of 1928-1929: A Nexus of Colonial Rule in Rwanda," in Histoire sociale de l'Afrique de l'est (Bujumbura, 1991), 269-85.
136. David Newbury, "Augustinian Models in Rwanda: Religious Movements and Political Transformation," Svensk Missionstidskrift 3 (1995): 16-34;
137. Patricia St. John, Breath of Life (London, 1971);
138. Joe E. Church, Quest for the Highest (Exeter, 1981);
139. John V. Taylor, The Growth of the Church in Buganda (London, 1958).
140. è siècles à nos jours (Brussels, 1959).
141. For elaboration, see Kagame, Inganji Karinga (Butare, 1959 [1943; 1947]);
142. Un abrégé, vol. 1;
143. "La chronologie au Burundi dans les genres littéraires de l'ancien Rwanda," Etudes rwandaises 12 (1979): 1-30.
144. The most important reassessments of Kagame's proposals include Vansina, L'évolution;
145. Keith Rennie, "The Precolonial Kingdom of Rwanda: A Reinterpretation," Transafrican Journal of History 2 (1972): 11-53;
146. Jean-Népomucène Nkurikiyimfura, "La revision d'une chronologie: Le cas du royaume du Rwanda," in Claude-Hélène Perrot, Gilbert Gonnin, and Ferdinand Nahimana, eds., Sources orales de l'histoire de l'Afrique (Paris, 1989).
147. For a broader critique of the official chronology - and of the dynastic genealogy - see David Newbury, "Trick Cyclists? Recontextualizing Rwandan Dynastic Chronology," History in Africa 21 (1994): 191-217.
148. Vansina, L'évolution, chap. 3, makes this point convincingly;
149. see also D. Newbury, "Trick Cyclists."
150. Vansina, L'évolution, 74-76;
151. D. Newbury, "Alchemy of Ethnicity."
152. For a more recent case of such claims, see David Newbury, "Irredentist Rwanda: Ethnic and Territorial Frontiers in Central Africa," Africa Today 44 (1997): 211-22.
153. Kagame, Un abrégé, 1: 58-59, 138-39.
154. A. d'Arianoff, L'histoire des Bagesera, souverains du Gisaka (Brussels, 1952);
155. but for commentary on how central court perspectives defined d'Arianoff's presentation, see also D. Newbury, "Trick Cyclists," 193-95.
156. An early anthropological work to focus on a region was Marcel d'Hertefelt, "Huwelijk, famille en aanverwantschap bij de Reera van noordwesterlijk Rwaanda," Zaire 13 (1959): 115-47, 243-85.
157. Other early regional works include Marcel Pauwels, "Le Bushiru et son muhinza ou roitelet Hutu," Annali del Pontificio Museo Missionario Etnologico 31 (1967): 205-322, and many other of his publications;
158. Félix Dufays and Vincent de Moor, Au Kinyaga: Les enchaînés (Brussels, 1938);
159. d'Arianoff, L'histoire des Bagesera;
160. Pagès, Un royaume hamite, 634-701.
161. On these polities, see Pauwels, "Le Bushiru";
162. Ferdinand Nahimana, "Les bami ou roitelets Hutu du corridor Nyabarongo-Mukungwa," Etudes rwandaises 12 (1979): 1-25;
163. Nahimana, Le Rwanda;
164. Emmanuel Ntezimana, "Coutumes et traditions des royaumes hutu du Bukunzi et du Busozo," Etudes rwandaises 13 (1980): 15-39;
165. Ntezimana, "L'arrivée des Européens au Kinyaga et la fin des royaumes hutu du Bukunzi et du Busozo," Etudes rwandaises 13 (1980): 1-29.
166. For discussion of the historical similarities of these polities with political organizations west of the Rift Valley (in what is now eastern Congo), see D. Newbury, Kings and Clans, chap. 2;
167. Richard Sigwalt, "Early Rwanda History: The Contribution of Comparative Ethnography," History in Africa 2 (1975): 137-46.
168. For a discussion of royal court (Nyiginya) attitudes toward the cultures of this area, see David Newbury, "Bunyabungo: The Western Rwandan Frontier, 1750-1850," in Igor Kopytoff, ed., The African Frontier (Bloomington, Ind., 1986), 162-93.
169. D'Hertefelt, "Huwelijk, famille en aanverwantschap";
170. Jim Freedman, "Principles of Relationship in Rwandan Kiga Society" (PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1974);
171. May Edel, The Chiga of Western Uganda (New York, 1957);
172. Denoon, History of Kigezi;
173. Paul Ngologaza, Kigezi and Its People (Kampala, 1969);
174. Benoni Turyahikayo-Rugyema, "The History of the Bakiga of Southwestern Uganda and Northern Rwanda (PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 1974);
175. Elizabeth Hopkins, "The Nyabingi Cult of Southwestern Uganda," in Robert Rotberg and Ali Mazrui, eds., Protest and Power in Black Africa (New York, 1970), 258-336;
176. Hopkins, "The Ethnography of Conquest," in Christine Ward Gailey, ed., Dialectical Anthropology: Essays in Honor of Stanley Diamond, Vol. 1, Civilization in Crisis: Anthropological Perspectives (Gainesville, Fla., 1992), 137-65.
177. For other examples of identities and dynamics that reach beyond state structures, see David Newbury, "Lake Kivu Regional Trade in the Nineteenth Century," Journal des Africanistes 50 (1980): 6-31;
178. è siècle" (Thèse de Licence, UNR-Butare, 1979);
179. Njiga Birhakaheka and Nsibula Kirhero, "Nyangezi dans ses relations commerciales avec le Rwanda, le Burundi, et le Bufulero," Etudes rwandaises 14 (1981): 89-98;
180. Luc de Heusch, Le Rwanda et la civilisation interlacustre (Brussels, 1966);
181. Iris Berger, Religion and Resistance: East African Kingdoms in the Precolonial Period (Tervuren, 1981);
182. Berger, "Fertility as Power: Spirit Mediums, Priestesses, and the Precolonial State in Interlacustrine East Africa," in David Anderson and Douglas Johnson, eds., Revealing Prophets: Prophecy in Eastern African History (London, 1995), 65-82;
183. Freedman, Nyabingi;
184. Feierman, "Colonizer, Scholars, and the Creation of Invisible Histories";
185. Jean-Pierre Chrétien, "La fermeture du Burundi et du Rwanda aux commerçants de l'extérieur (1905-1908)," in Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and Alain Forrest, eds., Entreprises et Entrepreneurs en Afrique, vol. 2 (Paris, 1983), 25-47.
186. Any firm enumeration of "cultural zones" in this region, of course, is an arbitrary exercise, as these shade into each other in a complex pattern of overlapping regional and local identities; for analytic purposes, however, while one can argue over the lines of demarcation, the general point of such differentiation remains important. Regional studies that privilege local dialogue with state power include C. Newbury, Cohesion of Oppression;
187. de Lame, Une colline;
188. Pierre Gravel, Remera: A Community in Eastern Rwanda (The Hague, 1968);
189. Jean-Pierre Chrétien, "La révolte de Ndungutse (1912): Forces traditionnelles et pression coloniale au Rwanda allemand," Revue française d'Outre-Mer 59 (1972): 645-80;
190. Freedman, "Principles";
191. Alison Des Forges, "The Drum Is Greater Than the Shout: The 1912 Rebellion in Northern Rwanda," in Donald Crummey, ed., Banditry, Rebellion and Social Protest in Africa (Portsmouth, N.H., 1986), 311-31;
192. Nahimana, Le Rwanda;
193. Rushatsi, "Monarchie nyiginya et pouvoirs européens."
194. John Hannington Speke, Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (New York, 1868), 242. Speke had also previously traveled in the Horn of Africa and was accompanied by a Somali aide-de-camp. In a sense, then, Speke's historical scenario mirrored his own travels.
195. Speke, Journal, 242.
196. Speke, Journal, 243.
197. Harry Johnston, The Uganda Protectorate (London, 1902).
198. (Johnston was also an intellectual polymath, the author of influential works on linguistics, botany, and zoology, as well as history.) Foremost among the Baganda elites constructing a hegemonic royal history was Apolo Kagwa, for forty years the Katakiro (or prime minister) of Buganda; among other works, see Ssekabaka by'e Buganda (Kampala, 1901),
199. translated as The Kings of Buganda (Nairobi, 1971).
200. John Rowe and Michael Twaddle have explored aspects of Ganda "subaltern historiography" - histories excluded from the mainstream writings: Rowe, "Myth, Memoir, and Moral Admonition: Luganda Historical Writing, 1893-1969," Uganda Journal 33 (1969): 17-40, 217-19;
201. Rowe, "Erieza Kintu's Sultani Anatoloka: A Nineteenth Century History Memoir from Buganda," History in Africa 20 (1993): 313-19;
202. Rowe, "The Anti-Establishment Voice in Twentieth Century Buganda: Or, the Power of the Printing Press and How the Ruling Elite Lost Their Monopoly over It," Makerere University History Department Seminar Paper (August 1991);
203. Twaddle and Rowe, War, Religion, and Revolution in Uganda: Six Dissident Discourses (East Lansing, forthcoming);
204. Twaddle, "On Ganda Historiography," History in Africa 2 (1976): 85-101.
205. In addition, see Wrigley, Kingship and State.
206. Julien Gorju, Entre le Victoria, l'Albert, et l'Edouard (Rennes, 1920);
207. later, for application specifically to Burundi and Rwanda, see Gorju, Face au royaume hamite du Ruanda, le royaume frère du Burundi (Brussels, 1938).
208. Among Africanists, "interlacustrine" is the conventional reference to the region between Lakes Albert, Edward, Kivu, and Tanganyika on the west and Lake Victoria on the east. The societies within this geographical domain form a distinct cultural zone and share several important characteristics: centralized kingship, stratified social organization, and mixed agrarian-pastoral economies. Hence they are collectively referred to as the "interlacustrine" cultures.
209. David Newbury, "Bushi and the Historians," History in Africa 5 (1978): 131-51.
210. Historique et chronologie du Ruanda [Kabgayi, 1956].
211. Ivan Reisdorff, "Enquêtes foncières au Ruanda," unpublished manuscript (Butare, 1952).
212. On Kagame, see Jean-Pierre Chrétien, "Confronting the Unequal Exchange between the Oral and the Written," in Bogumil Jewsiewicki and David Newbury, eds., African Historiographies: What History for Which Africa? (Newbury Park, Calif., 1986), 75-90, esp. 84-87;
213. Claudine Vidal, "Alexis Kagame entre mémoire et histoire," History in Africa 15 (1988): 493-504;
214. Vidal, "Alexis Kagame," in Vidal, Sociologie des Passions (Paris, 1991), 45-61;
215. D. Newbury, "Trick Cyclists."
216. On clientship: C. Newbury, Cohesion of Oppression;
217. Catharine Newbury, "Ubureetwa and Thangata: Catalysts to Peasant Political Consciousness in Rwanda and Malawi," Canadian Journal of African Studies 14 (1980): 97-111;
218. Claudine Vidal, "Le Rwanda des anthropologues ou le fétischisme de la vache," Cahiers d'études africaines 9 (1969): 384-401;
219. Nkurikiyimfura, Le gros bétail.
220. On ethnicity, see Catharine Newbury, "Ethnicity in Rwanda: The Case of Kinyaga," Africa 48 (1978): 17-28;
221. Claudine Vidal, "Situations ethniques au Rwanda," in Jean-Luc Amselle and Elikia M'bokolo, eds., Au coeur de l'ethnie (Paris, 1985), 167-84.
222. On kingship, D. Newbury, Kings and Clans;
223. Richard Sigwalt, "The Early History of Bushi" (PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1975):
224. On clanship, Marcel d'Hertefelt, Les clans du Rwanda ancien (Tervuren, 1971);
225. David Newbury, "The Clans of Rwanda: An Historical Hypothesis," Africa 50 (1980): 389-403;
226. Catharine Newbury, "Deux Lignages au Kinyaga," Cahiers d'études africaines 14 (1974): 26-38.
227. On royal ritual, Marcel d'Hertefelt and André Coupez, La royauté sacrée de l'ancien Rwanda (Tervuren, 1964);
228. David Newbury, "What Role Has Kingship? An Analysis of the Umuganura Ritual of Rwanda," Africa-Tervuren 27 (1981): 89-101;
229. Richard Sigwalt, "Early Rwanda History: The Contribution of Comparative Ethnography," History in Africa 2 (1975): 137-46.
230. Kagame, Un abrégé, 1: 212-14;
231. Un abrégé, 2: 2, 28-35;
232. Alexis Kagame, Les milices du Rwanda précolonial (Brussels, 1963), 155-57. In fact, the story was much more complicated. Rwabugiri had been born to Nkoronko's wife - even though the official sources claim it was through her liaison with Rwogera, Nkoronko's brother and Rwabugiri's predecessor as king of Rwanda. Rwogera later proposed an exchange of sons with Nkoronko, and Rwabugiri (then named Sezisoni), Rwogera's adopted son (and supposed biological offspring?), then succeeded to the throne. Over the course of his reign, Rwabugiri not only condemned to execution his uncle (and biological father?) but his mother and his wife (the mother of his designated successor and co-regnant) as well; in addition, he had his cousin blinded. And these were not the only cases where members of the royal family were killed or maimed for knowing too much history. Shrewd actors attended carefully to hegemonic history.
233. Among many examples, see Czekanowski, Forschungen;
234. Albert Pagès, "Notes sur le régime des biens dans le Province du Bugoyi," Congo 19 (1938): 392-433;
235. C. Newbury, Cohesion of Oppression, chap. 7.
236. Johan Pottier, "The Politics of Famine Prevention: Ecology, Regional Production, and Food Complementarity in Western Rwanda," African Affairs 85 (1986): 207-37;
237. Johan Pottier, "'Three's a Crowd': Knowledge, Ignorance and Power in the Context of Urban Agriculture in Rwanda," Africa 59 (1989): 461-77;
238. Pottier, "Taking Stock: Food Marketing Reform in Rwanda, 1982-89," African Affairs 92 (1993): 5-30.
239. For analogous situations elsewhere, see Kathleen Staudt, "Agricultural Productivity Gaps: A Case Study of Male Preference in Government Policy Implementation," Development and Change 9 (1978): 439-58;
240. Kathleen Staudt, "Women Farmers and Inequities in Agricultural Services," in Edna Bay, ed., Women and Work in Africa (Boulder, Colo., 1981), 207-24.
241. Emmanuel Ntezimana, "Kinyamateka, Temps Nouveaux d'Afrique: L'évolution socio-politique du Rwanda (1954-1959)," Etudes rwandaises, Special Issue (March 1978): 1-29.
242. Helen Codere, "Power in Rwanda," Anthropologica 4 (1962): 45-85;
243. Lemarchand, Rwanda and Burundi;
244. Vidal, "Le Rwanda des anthropologues";
245. Vansina, L'évolution;
246. C. Newbury, Cohesion of Oppression;
247. Nahimana, Le Rwanda.
248. Bishikwabo and Newbury, "Recent Research," summarizes many of these works from the early postcolonial period.
249. This conclusion is shared by Danielle de Lame, "Instants Retrouvés: Rwanda, regards neufs au fil du temps," in Patrick Wymeersch, ed., Liber Amicorum Marcel d'Hertefelt (Brussels, 1993), 115-31.
250. For one example, see République du Rwanda, Résultats de l'enquête nationale agricole 1984, vol. 1 (Kigali, 1985).
251. Exceptions that explore the changing relations between peasants and the state include André Guichaoua, Destins paysans et politiques agraires en Afrique centrale, Vol. 1: L'ordre paysan des hautes terres centrales du Burundi et du Rwanda (Paris, 1989);
252. Catharine Newbury, "Rwanda: Recent Debates over Governance and Rural Development," in Governance and Politics in Africa, Goran Hyden and Michael Bratton, eds. (Boulder, Colo., 1992), 193-219;
253. de Lame, Une colline;
254. Timothy P. Longman, "Christianity and Crisis in Rwanda: Religion, Civil Society, Democratization, and Decline" (PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1995);
255. Claudine Vidal, "Questions sur le rôle des paysans durant le génocide des rwandais tutsi," Cahiers d'études africaines 38 (1998): 331-45.
256. Also sensitive to rural transformations, though this is not the main focus of his study, is Filip Reyntjens, L'Afrique des Grands Lacs en crise: Rwanda, Burundi, 1988-1994 (Paris, 1994).
257. For a critique of how development agencies ignored power dynamics in Rwanda, see René Lemarchand, "The World Bank in Rwanda: The Case of the Office de Valorisation Agricole et Pastorale du Mutara (OVAPAM)" (Bloomington, Ind., 1982);
258. Jean-Pierre Godding, "Foreign Aid as an Obstacle to Development: The Case of Rwanda's Rural Development Projects," in Michael Lipton, ed., International Perspectives on Rural Development (Sussex, 1984);
259. Jean-Pierre Godding, "Grands projets et développement communal," Dialogue 134 (1989): 3-15;
260. Peter Uvin, Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda (West Hartford, Conn., 1998).
261. On the broader issues involved, see James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: "Development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Cambridge, 1990);
262. Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, N.J., 1995).
263. For precolonial examples of such interactions from western Rwanda and their neglect (or ridicule) in conventional historiography, see D. Newbury, "Lake Kivu Trade";
264. D. Newbury, "Bunyabungo";
265. Pagès, Un royaume hamite, 543-701;
266. Nyagahene, "Les attitudes économiques et commerciales du Kinyaga";
267. Birhakaheka and Kirhero, "Nyangezi";
268. Chubaka Bishikwabo, "Histoire d'un état Shi en Afrique des Grands Lacs: Kaziba au Zaire" (PhD dissertation, Louvain la Neuve, 1982).
269. In part, the perpetuation of this insular character of official historiography comes from the colonial administrative traditions and postcolonial academic constructs. On the one hand, a language barrier separated Rwandan historians from East African scholarship, and the gap between Anglophone and Francophone traditions was reflected in different intellectual traditions, as well as simply in language. Furthermore, to the west, despite Belgian over-rule in each territory, as a League of Nations mandated territory and later a UN Trust Territory, Rwanda was administratively distinct from the Congo; indeed, Belgian administrators in Rwanda were not posted to the Congo. Consequently, Rwandan administrators and government personnel (Africans as well as expatriates) came to see themselves as culturally distinct from areas to their west (in the Congo) as well as to their east and north (Tanganyika and Uganda: British territories). Such perceptions drew attention away from the strong and lasting cultural connections between peoples within Rwandan state boundaries and others to their west, north, and east; colonial emphasis on the autonomy of Rwanda was reflected in the historiography as well.
270. C. Newbury, "Ubureetwa and Thangata."
271. De Lacger, Le Ruanda, 50-55;
272. Kagame, Abrégé, 1: 28-30;
273. and especially Maquet, Premise of Inequality, 129-73.
274. Maquet's interpretations were widely diffused to Anglophone anthropologists and others through the writings of Lucy Mair. See Mair, Primitive Government (Harmondsworth, 1962);
275. Mair, African Societies (Cambridge, 1974), 166-81;
276. Mair, African Kingdoms (Oxford, 1977).
277. The assumptions of court hegemony about clientship were challenged first by Codere, "Power in Rwanda."
278. Codere's critique was then followed up by Vidal, "Le Rwanda des anthropologues ou le fétichisme de la vache";
279. Claudine Vidal, "Economie de la société féodale Rwandaise," Cahiers d'études africaines 14 (1974): 52-74.
280. Other studies that, like Vidal's, show clientship as ultimately embedded in political process and that trace the evolution of multiple forms of clientship and their interrelationships over time include C. Newbury, "Deux lineages";
281. C. Newbury, Cohesion of Oppression, 73-147;
282. Gravel, Remera, 170-85;
283. Joseph Rwabukumba and Vincent Mudandagizi, "Les formes historiques de la dépendance personnelle dans l'Etat rwandais," Cahiers d'études africaines 14 (1974): 6-25;
284. Nkurikiyimfura, Le gros bétail.
285. Some forms of voluntary clientship and friendship ties were present, of course, but they were not the only forms - indeed, not the predominant forms in Rwanda during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular, it is useful to distinguish ubuhake forms from ubugabire forms of clientship found in Burundi and elsewhere in the region; see, for example, Albert A. Trouwborst, "L'organisation politique et l'accord de clientèle au Burundi," Anthropologica, n.s., 4 (1962): 9-43;
286. è siècle," Etudes d'histoire africaine 7 (1975): 59-76.
287. The case study from which these conclusions emerge is found in Jean-François Saucier, "The Patron-Client Relationship in Traditional and Contemporary Rwanda" (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1974).
288. For an elaboration, see de Lame, Une colline, 223-25, 236-41. De Lame makes the important point that in Rwandan culture (now as in the past), there are diverse ways to obtain cattle outside the institution ubuhake. She also shows (pp. 226-27) that in the local area she studied in the late 1980s, more than 50 percent of Hutu households had one or more cows, while only about 33 percent of Tutsi households had cattle. Those with the largest number of cattle (five to nine) were the "modern elites" - merchants or people with a salary.
289. Some works that refer to labor issues include Codere, Biography;
290. Philippe Leurquin, Le niveau de vie des populations rurales du Ruanda-Urundi (Paris, 1960);
291. Audrey Richards, Economic Development and Tribal Change: A Study of Immigrant Labor in Uganda (Cambridge, 1956);
292. Belgium, Gouvernement Belge, Rapport présenté par le gouvernement Belge au Conseil de la Sociétés des Nations au sujet de l'administration du Ruanda-Urundi, 1924-1937 (Geneva, 1925-38);
293. Belgium, Gouvernement Belge, Ministère des Colonies/Ministère du Congo Belge et du Ruanda-Urundi, Rapport présenté par le Gouvernement Belge au conseil de Tutelle des Nations Unies sur l'administration du Ruanda-Urundi, 1948-1959 (Brussels, 1949-60).
294. A literary treatment of labor is found in Saverio Nayigiziki, Mes transes à trente ans, Vol. 2: De mal en pis: Histoire vécue, melée de roman (Astrida [Butare], 1955).
295. For a scholarly study that did address labor issues, see Vidal, "Economie de la société féodale."
296. Des Forges, "Defeat Is the Only Bad News," 340-42.
297. Many testimonies in Codere, Biography, illustrate this.
298. Also, C. Newbury, Cohesion of Oppression, 169. Our own interviews confirm this for eastern Rwanda.
299. Some exceptions on postcolonial agrarian issues include Pierre Kabagabo, "Les programmes agricoles et la contribution de la femme," Session d'étude et d'information des cadres de l'action sociale tenue à Butare du 10 au 26 janvier 1966 (Kigali, 1966);
300. Charles Ntakirutimana, "La femme rwandaise: Purgatoire ou libération?" Le diaspason 11 (1976): 63-68;
301. Charles Ntampaka, "L'égalité de l'homme et de la femme dans la société rwandaise," Le diaspason 11 (1977): 51-57;
302. Odette Ubonabenshi, "Femme rurale et développement du pays," Dialogue 133 (1989): 25-36.
303. Gouvernement Belge, Ministère des Colonies, l'Office de l'information et des relations publiques pour le Congo belge et le Ruanda-Urundi, Le Ruanda-Urundi (Brussels, 1959), 253.
304. United Nations Development Programme, Rural Women's Participation in Development, Evaluation Study no. 3 (New York, 1980), 81.
305. Similarly for tea production, see Joseph Laure, Des vivres ou du thé? L'alimentation et les conditions de vie de familles rwandaises (Paris, 1986).
306. On women forced to do corvée in the absence of their husbands, see C. Newbury, Cohesion of Oppression, 176-77;
307. our interviews elsewhere in Rwanda confirm this pattern, as infrequent but not unknown. On the prevalence of work abroad, see also Codere, Biography.
308. For an analogous case in Tanzania of state power reinforcing gender hierarchy, see Marjorie Mbilinyi, "Runaway Wives in Colonial Tanganyika - Forced Labor and Forced Marriage in Rungwe District, 1919-1961," International Journal of the Sociology of Law 16 (1988): 1-29.
309. Richards, Economic Development and Tribal Change;
310. Jean-Pierre Chrétien, "Des sédentaires devenues migrants: Les motifs des départs des Barundi et des Rwandais vers l'Uganda," Cultures et développement 10 (1978): 71-101;
311. D. Newbury, "Rwakayihura Famine";
312. C. Newbury, Cohesion of Oppression, chap. 8;
313. Jim Freedman, "East African Peasants and Capitalist Development: The Kiga of Northern Rwanda," in David H. Turner and Gavin Smith, eds., Challenging Anthropology (New York, 1979), 245-60.
314. On rural responses to famine: Reisdorff, "Enquêtes foncières";
315. Chrétien, "Des sédentaires devenus migrants";
316. D. Newbury, "Rwakayihura Famine";
317. Anne Cornet, "Histoire d'une famine: Rwanda 1924-1930,"
318. Enquêtes et documents africains 13 (1996);
319. Leurquin, Le niveau de vie, 31-32.
320. A revealing commentary by Jean Paul Harroy (the highest administrative official of Ruanda-Urundi during the late 1950s) glorifies the role of the state in reconfiguring rural production. See Bonaventure Habimana and Jean-Paul Harroy, "Instauration et abrogation des cultures vivrières obligatoires au Rwanda," Civilisations 30 (1980): 33-66.
321. But Leurquin, who worked in rural areas at the very time of Harroy's administration, notes that in one "experiment," it was announced that a community was allowed to plant what they wished; immediately, the fields of manioc (required cultivation) disappeared, after, he added, "30 years of 'cultures éducatives'" (i.e., forced crops). Le niveau de vie, 72.
322. See E. Everaerts, "Monographie agricole du Ruanda-Urundi," Bulletin agricole du Congo Belge 30 (1939): 343-96, 581-663;
323. and the annual reports of the Belgian government to the League of Nations and the United Nations. The viewpoints are epitomized in the report by the Belgian Ministère des Colonies, Plan décennal pour le développement économique et social du Ruanda-Urundi (Brussels, 1951).
324. In this regard, Belgian agrarian policies in colonial Rwanda foreshadowed the kind of "development" strategies analyzed by James Ferguson in The Anti-Politics Machine,
325. in which local knowledge is excised in the name of technical expertise. A particularly telling critique of state-centered planning based on "high-modernist ideology" is found in James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, Conn., 1998).
326. For additional recent critiques of development discourses, see Frederick Cooper and Randall Packard, eds., International Development and the Social Sciences: Essays on the History and Politics of Knowledge (Berkeley, Calif., 1997);
327. Escobar, Encountering Development;
328. Jonathan Crush, ed., Power of Development (New York, 1995).
329. On Rwanda, see Lemarchand, "World Bank in Rwanda."
330. Leurquin notes that, when it was seen to be "in their proper interest," communities had often undertaken unpaid collective work projects, such as constructing irrigation networks ("over considerable distances, traversing ravines in hollowed-out logs"), building bridges (sometimes using bricks made by public labor), and draining swamps. Le niveau de vie, 74. It would appear, therefore, that it was the forced nature of the work (and the question of to whom benefits accrued), not the work itself, that was opposed.
331. The classic statement is Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons," Science 162 (1968): 1243-48.
332. However, for a devastating critique of such thinking applied to Africa, see Pauline Peters, Dividing the Commons: Politics, Policy and Culture in Botswana (Charlottesville, Va., 1994).
333. For an introduction to a wider literature on the struggle for the commons, see preeminently E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters (New York, 1975).
334. For Tanzania, similar reactions are brought out in Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals.
335. For southern Africa, see, for example, William Beinart, "The Politics of Colonial Conservation," Journal of Southern African Studies 15 (1989): 143-62;
336. William Beinart, "Soil Erosion, Conservationism and Ideas about Development: A Southern African Exploration, 1900-1960," Journal of Southern African Studies 11 (1984): 52-83;
337. Ian Phimister, "Discourse and the Discipline of Historical Context: Conservationism and Ideas about Development in Southern Rhodesia, 1930-1950," Journal of Southern African Studies 12 (1986): 263-75;
338. Richard Grove, "Scottish Missionaries, Evangelical Discourses and the Origins of Conservation Thinking in Southern Africa, 1820-1900," Journal of Southern African Studies 15 (1989): 163-87.
339. These approaches were indicated in Bishikwabo and Newbury, "Recent Research."
340. Gravel, Remera;
341. C. Newbury, Cohesion of Oppression;
342. D. Newbury, "Rwakayihura Famine";
343. de Lame, Une colline.
344. Leurquin based his analyses on data collected from 1,240 households in central and southwest Rwanda and north-central Burundi over 12 months (1955-1956). Because of the difficulty of measuring "production," he focused his study on household budgets and food consumed: Leurquin, Le niveau de vie, 112, 131-34, 203-05, 209.
345. Leurquin, Le niveau de vie, 204.
346. Leurquin, Le niveau de vie, 75.
347. Learthen Dorsey, "The Rwandan Colonial Economy, 1916-1941" (PhD dissertation, Michigan State University, 1983).
348. For differential tax rates by region during the early colonial period, see C. Newbury, Cohesion of Oppression, 172-74.
349. Leurquin, Le niveau de vie, 251,
350. notes that under colonial requirements, many men's tasks had been reduced, but women's tasks had increased. This was general to colonial work patterns in Africa. On gender and production patterns elsewhere in Africa, see (from an extensive literature) Janet Bujra, "Urging Women to Redouble Their Efforts: Class, Gender, and Capitalist Transformation in Africa," in Claire Robertson and Iris Berger, eds., Women and Class in Africa (New York, 1986), 117-40;
351. Jane Parpart, "Women and the State in Africa," in Donald Rothchild and Naomi Chazan, eds., The Precarious Balance (Boulder, Colo., 1988), 208-30;
352. Jeanne Koopman, "Women and the Rural Economy: Past, Present, and Future," in Margaret Jean Hay and Sharon Stichler, eds., African Women South of the Sahara, 2d edn. (New York, 1995), 3-22;
353. Iris Berger and E. Frances White, eds., Women in Sub-Saharan Africa: Restoring Women to History (Bloomington, Ind., 1999);
354. Marcia Wright, "Technology, Marriage and Women's Work in the History of Maize Growers in Mazabuka, Zambia: A Reconnaissance," Journal of Southern African Studies 10 (1983): 71-85;
355. Maud Shimwaayi Muntemba, "Women and Agricultural Change in the Railway Region of Zambia: Dispossession and Counterstrategies, 1930-1970," in Edna Bay, ed., Women and Work in Africa (Boulder, 1982), 83-103.
356. See also the contributions to the symposium "Women, Family, State, and Economy in Africa," Bolanle Awe, Susan Geiger, and Nina Mba, eds., Signs 16 (1991).
357. C. Newbury, Cohesion of Oppression,
358. and de Lame, Une colline, 45-79, detail the long-term evolution of rural grievances underlying the eventual transformations of 1959-1962.
359. These aspects are brought out in other works as well: Lemarchand, Rwanda and Burundi;
360. Donat Murego, La révolution rwandaise (Louvain, 1975);
361. Linden and Linden, Church and Revolution;
362. Reyntjens, Pouvoir et droit.
363. There is a rapidly growing field of environmental history in Africa. Among many works, see for West Africa: James Fairhead and Melissa Leach, Misreading the African Landscape (London, 1993).
364. For Central Africa: Robert Harms, Games against Nature (Cambridge, 1987).
365. For East Africa: Helge Kjekshus, Ecology Control and Economic Development in East African History (Berkeley, Calif., 1977);
366. James Giblin, The Politics of Environmental Control in Northeastern Tanzania, 1840-1940 (Philadelphia, 1992).
367. For southern Africa: William Beinart and Peter Coates, Environment and History (London, 1995);
368. Peters, Dividing the Commons;
369. Elias Mandala, Work and Control in a Peasant Economy: A History of the Lower Tchiri Valley of Malawi (Madison, Wis., 1990);
370. Terence Ranger, Voices from the Rocks: Nature, Culture and History from the Matopos Hills (Bloomington, Ind., 1999);
371. Megan Vaughan, The Story of an African Famine (Cambridge, 1987).
372. For Africa more generally, see James C. McCann, Green Land, Brown Land, Black Land (Portsmouth, N.H., 1999).
373. Outside Africa, important early works of this type include William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York, 1983);
374. Donald Worster, Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (Cambridge, 1977);
375. Donald Worster, ed., The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History (Cambridge, 1988);
376. David Arnold, The Problem of Nature (Oxford, 1995);
377. Richard Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 (Cambridge, 1995);
378. Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe (Cambridge, 1986).
379. Jennifer Olson, "Farmer Responses to Land Degradation in Gikongoro, Rwanda" (PhD dissertation, Michigan State University, 1994), 80.
380. Although Olson's work was carried out in southern Rwanda, her conclusions are independently confirmed for northwest Rwanda: Catherine André and Jean-Philippe Platteau, "Land Relations under Unbearable Stress: Rwanda Caught in the Malthusian Trap," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 34 (1998): 1-47.
381. Elsewhere in the region, similar conclusions emerge. For Bwisha, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo: James Fairhead, "Fields of Struggle: Towards a Social History of Farming Knowledge and Practice in a Bwisha Community, Kivu, Zaire" (PhD dissertation, University of London, SOAS, 1990).
382. For Burundi: Barnabé Ndarishikanye, "Des identités ethnico-politiques forgées dans la violence," Canadian Journal of African Studies (in press);
383. for Buhaya: Priscilla Reining, "Social Factors in Food Production in an East African Peasant Society: The Haya," in Peter McLoughlin, ed., African Food Production Systems (Baltimore, 1970), 41-91;
384. Marion Pratt, "Women Who Eat Men's Money: Ecology, Culture, Gender Relations, and the Fishing Economy on the Western Shore of Lake Victoria" (PhD dissertation, State University of New York, Binghamton, 1995).
385. Cattle have been present in Rwanda for more than 2,000 years and cultivation for more than 1,500 - long preceding the attributed migrations of contemporary social categories. David Schoenbrun, A Green Place, a Good Place: Agrarian Change, Gender, and Social Identity in the Great Lakes Region (Portsmouth, N.H., 1998);
386. David Schoenbrun, "We Are What We Eat: Ancient Agriculture between the Great Lakes," Journal of African History 34 (1993): 1-31.
387. Pottier, "Three's a Crowd";
388. Olson, "Farmer Responses," 125.
389. Olson, "Farmer Responses," 141.
390. For some exceptions, see Vidal, "Economie de la société féodale";
391. Victor Silvestre, "Différentiations socio-économiques dans une société à vocation égalitaire: Masaka dans le paysannat de l'Icyanya," Cahiers d'études africaines 14 (1974): 104-69;
392. Lydia Meschi, "Evolution des structures foncières au Rwanda: Le cas d'un lignage Hutu," Cahiers d'études africaines 14 (1974): 39-51;
393. Freedman, "East African Peasants."
394. See, for example, République du Rwanda, Résultats de l'enquête nationale agricole 1984 (Kigali, 1984).
395. Some examples include Bernard Itangishaka, "Pour la défense du revenu du paysan," Dialogue 130 (1988): 26-36;
396. Ubonabenshi, "Femme rurale et développement du pays";
397. Emmanuel Ntezimana, "Principes essentiels et conditions préalables à la démocratie," Dialogue 144 (1990): 33-49;
398. Godding, "Grands projets et développement communal";
399. Pottier, "Politics of Famine Prevention";
400. Pottier, "Taking Stock";
401. Joachim Voss, "L'amélioration de la culture du haricot sur la base d'un diagnostic des contraintes de production, des pratiques et des potentiels des agriculteurs," in Augustin Nkundabashaka and Joachim Voss, eds., Les projets de développement rural (Butare, 1987), 37-46.
402. As editor of Kinyamateka (the preeminent newspaper of Rwanda), the late André Sibomana contributed in important ways to these discussions; a peasant syndicate, Ingabo, was also catalyzed by these concerns. For an analysis of the debate over rural policies in Rwanda during the 1980s, see C. Newbury, "Recent Debates."
403. On Sibomana, see André Sibomana, Gardons espoir pour le Rwanda (Paris, 1997);
404. Hervé Deguine, Rwanda: Enquête sur la mort d'André Sibomana (Paris, 1998).
405. André Sibomana was particularly eloquent on such issues; see C. Newbury, "Recent Debates," 208-12;
406. on the effects of external aid projects, see Godding, "Foreign Aid as an Obstacle to Development";
407. Godding, "Grands projets et développement communal";
408. Lemarchand, "World Bank in Rwanda";
409. A. Hanssen, Le désenchantement de la coopération: Enquête au pays des mille coopérants (Paris, 1989).
410. Jean Rumiya, "Ruanda d'hier, Rwanda d'aujourd'hui," Vivant Univers 357 (May-June 1985): 8.
411. Reyntjens, Pouvoir et droit, 515.
412. Guichaoua, Destins paysans, 1: 187.
413. Fernand Bézy, Rwanda, 1962-1989: Bilan socio-économique d'un régime (Louvain, 1990), 32.
414. Bézy, Rwanda, 54-56.
415. De Lame, Une colline, esp. 297 and following.
416. Vidal, "Questions sur le rôle des paysans," 339, also notes de Lame's attention to the economic diversity among peasants in Rwanda.
417. On the character of increasing rural impoverishment elsewhere in Rwanda, see André and Platteau, "Land Relations under Unbearable Stress";
418. David Newbury, "Ecology and the Politics of Genocide: Rwanda 1994," Cultural Survival Quarterly 22 (1999): 32-36;
419. Olson, "Farmer Responses," chap. 5.
420. De Lame, Une colline, 68.
421. Michelle Wagner, "All the Bourgmèstre's Men: Making Sense of Genocide in Rwanda," Africa Today 45 (1998): 25-36.
422. André and Platteau, "Land Relations under Unbearable Stress."
423. For another recent case study, see François Migeotte, Une colline rwandaise à travers ses pratiques d'élévage (Tervuren, 1997).
424. Longman, "Christianity and Crisis in Rwanda";
425. Timothy Longman, "Genocide and Socio-Political Change: Massacres in Two Rwandan Villages," Issue 23 (1995): 18-21;
426. Longman, "Empowering the Weak and Protecting the Powerful: The Contradictory Nature of Churches in Central Africa," African Studies Review 41 (1998): 49-72.
427. Some of these issues regarding the roles of peasants in the genocide are discussed in Vidal, "Questions sur le rôle des paysans";
428. Danielle de Lame, "Ces annees-là, les communautés rurales," intro. to François Migeotte, Une colline rwandaise, 9-23;
429. de Lame, "Le génocide rwandais et le vaste monde, les liens de sang," in Stefaan Marysse and Filip Reyntjens, eds., L'Afrique des Grands Lacs, Annuaire 1996-97 (Paris, 1997), 157-77.
430. For further scholarly analyses of the genocide and its ramifications, see (from a vast literature) Alison Des Forges, "Leave None to Tell the Story": Genocide in Rwanda (New York, 1999);
431. André Guichaoua, ed., Les crises politiques au Burundi et au Rwanda, 1993-1994, 2d edn. (Lille, 1995);
432. René Lemarchand, "Genocide in the Great Lakes: Which Genocide? Whose Genocide?" African Studies Review 41 (1998): 3-16;
433. Uvin, Aiding Violence; Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide, 2d edn. (New York, 1997);
434. Villia Jefremovas, "Contested Identities: Power and the Fictions of Ethnicity, Ethnography, and History in Rwanda," Anthropologica 39 (1997): 91-104;
435. Reyntjens, L'Afrique des Grands Lacs en crise; Filip Reyntjens, Trois jours qui ont fait basculer l'histoire (Brussels, 1995);
436. Jean-Claude Willame, Aux sources de l'hécatombe rwandaise (Brussels, 1995).
437. In several publications, we have tried to suggest that one cannot understand the genocide without understanding the political economy of Rwanda over the 1980s and 1990s, especially the complex social processes in operation in the rural areas. Catharine Newbury, "Background to Genocide in Rwanda," Issue 23 (1995): 12-17;
438. David Newbury, "Understanding Genocide," African Studies Review 41 (1998): 73-97;
439. D. Newbury, "Ecology and the Politics of Genocide";
440. Catharine Newbury and David Newbury, "Death and Demos: Failed Democratization in Rwanda" (paper presented at the SSRC conference "Transitions in Africa: Violence and the Politics of Participation," Niamey, Niger, June 1996);
441. Catharine Newbury and David Newbury, "A Catholic Mass in Kigali: Contested Views of Ethnicity and the Genocide in Rwanda," Canadian Journal of African Studies (in press).