Ethnicity and nationalism

Abstract

Abstract Let us begin our exploration of ethnicity and nationalism with two tales to illustrate how ethnic identities ‘come into being’ and con­ tribute to the formation of groups that, in some but by no means even the majority of cases, eventually engage in violent conflict with one another. Our first tale begins in Rwanda around 2000 BC. By then the first inhabitants of the territory of today’s Rwanda had arrived in the area. They were hunter-gatherers and forest dwellers. Although the oldest of Rwanda’s inhabitants, their present-day descendants, the Twa, are only a very small minority of around 1 per cent of Rwanda’s total population. About 1,000 years later, farmers began to migrate to the area. Clearing forests and cultivating the land, they quickly grew in numbers, partially displacing the original settlers.