Rwandan State Research Articles

Kings and Clans: Ijwi Island and the Lake Kivu Rift, 1780-1840

This book questions the assumption that clans, as traditionally defined by anthropologists and historians, are static structures that hamper political centralization. By reconstructing the history of kings and clans in the Kivu Rift Valley at a time of critical social change, this book enlarges our understanding of social process and the growth of state power in Africa. In the early 19th century many factors contributed to the creation of new social relations in the Lake Kivu region - ecological change, population movement, the expansion of the Rwandan state from the east, the rise of new political units to the west and the movement of many population groups and their rural forms through the area. This book looks at the role of clans in the establishment of a new kingdom on Ijwi Island in Lake Kivu. Drawing on detailed ethnographic observations of the social and ritual organizations of Ijwi society, oral data and evidence from written sources, this book shows that the clans of Ijwi were not static formations, nor did the establishment of a royal family on the island emerge from military conquest and internal social breakdown.

Ethnicity in Rwanda: the Case of Kinyaga

Opening ParagraphThe nature of ethnic interaction has been at the heart of a longstanding debate on the characteristics of Rwanda's precolonial political system. Until recently, the historical referents for such discussion, and in particular the origins of the Rwandan state and its social institutions have been seen as far too remote to base conclusions on empirical data. Consequently the debate has tended to be formulated in terms of logical constructs, rather than in terms of empirical reconstruction of the historical processes involved.

Bushi and the Historians: Historiographical Themes in Eastern Kivu

Historical studies of Kivu are still in their very infancy. Recent work has been carried out in Bufulero, Bushi, Buhavu, and Bunande, but lacking the results of these studies, historians working from published materials have very few sources at their disposal. Existing sources include works by Colle, Moeller, Willame, and Cuypers, with the latter two based primarily on the former, at least in their historical dimensions. Because the sources are so few and are essentially similar, little critical attention has been given them; by constant citation and repetition they have become hallowed as truth and used as a basis for teaching and university theses. By this process such essentially colonial interpretations have become entrenched in the historical ontology of the region. This paper proposes to review some of the written sources in light of current research in the region, by first presenting certain themes which appear to have guided earlier historical inquiry and then discussing the works of these four influential authors in light of these themes.The first attempts to record historical traditions in the Kivu area were influenced by earlier studies of Rwanda which emphasized the centralized and hierarchical nature of the Rwandan state. Many of the early missionaries and Zairean priests in Kivu, men to whom contemporary researchers owe much for their accumulated sources, had close contacts with the seminaries and published work in Rwanda. In most historical works, Rwanda was seen as the end development for other states in the region, and prominence was given to those historical factors which were assumed to have had a common impact throughout the area.