History of Rwanda: Encyclopedia II - History of Rwanda - Colonial influence

History of Rwanda - Colonial influence

Unlike the rest of the region the fate of Rwanda and the Great Lakes region was not decided by the 1884 Berlin Conference. Rather the region was divided in an 1890 conference in Brussels. This gave Rwanda and Burundi to the German Empire as colonial spheres of interest in exchange, renouncing all claims on Uganda in exchange for being given the island of Heligoland. The poor maps referenced in these agreements left Belgium with a claim on the western half of the country, and after several border skirmishes the final borders of the colony were not established until 1900. These borders contained the kingdom of Rwanda as well as a group of smaller kingdoms on the shore of Lake Victoria.

In 1894 Rutarindwa inherited the kingdom from his father Rwabugiri IV, but many of the king's council were unhappy. There was a rebellion and the family was killed. Yuhi Musinga inherited the throne through his mother and uncles, but there was still dissent.

History of Rwanda - German colonialism

War and division seemed to open the door for colonialism, and in 1897 German colonialists arrived in Rwanda. The Rwandans were divided with a portion of the royal court being very wary and the other seeing the Germans as a welcome alternative to the dominance of Buganda or the rapacious Belgians. Backing their faction in the country a pliant government was soon in place. Rwanda put up far less resistance than Burundi to German rule.

In the early years the Germans had a very tenuous control in the region and were completely dependent on the indigenous government. The Germans did encourage modernization and centralization of the regime.

During this period many Europeans had become obsessed with the study of race, and this had an impact on life in Rwanda. To the Germans, the Tutsi ruling class was a superior racial type who, because of their apparent "Hamitic" origins on the Horn of Africa, were more "white" than the Hutus they oppressed, and thus the Tutsi oppression of the Hutus seemed somehow normal and expected. As with later Belgian colonizers, the Germans romanticized Tutsi origins.

Before the colonial period about 15-16% of the population was Tutsi, many of these were poor peasants, but the majority of the ruling elite were Tutsi. A significant minority of the political elite were Hutu, however. Europeans simplified this arrangement and decided that the Hamitic Tutsi were racially superior and should thus make up the entire rulling class, while the inferior Bantu Hutu should become a permanent underclass.

The Germans, simply out of their need for a streamlined administration, helped the Mwami gain greater nominal control over Rwandan affairs. But there were forces that entered with the German colonial authority that had the opposite effect. For instance, Tutsi power weakened through the exposure of Rwanda to capitalist European forces. Money came to be seen by many Hutus as a replacement for cattle, in terms of both economic prosperity and for purposes of creating social standing. Another way in which Tutsi power was weakened by Germany was through the introduction of the head-tax on all Rwandans. As some Tutsis had feared, the introduction of this tax also made the Hutus feel less bonded to the will of their Tutsi patrons and more dependent on the European foreigners, any head-tax necessarily implying equality between any of those heads being counted - whether Hutu or Tutsi. Thus, despite Germany's attempt to uphold traditional Tutsi domination of the Hutus, the Hutus were now getting a slight taste of autonomy from Tutsi rule.

History of Rwanda - World War I

While the agreements dividing the region had called for the region to remain neutral in the event of any European war, this was disregarded after the outbreak of World War I. Small forces of Europeans, backed by large numbers of locals fought for control of the region. The main offensive was by the Belgians who quickly forced the German forces out of the region. A British offensive from Uganda aided them. The Belgian army was mostly made up of Congolese forces who proceeded to loot and pillage the region. A great number of Rwandans, who were fighting alongside the Germans, were killed in the long German retreat.

History of Rwanda - Belgian colonialism

At the end of the war the League of Nations mandated Rwanda and its southern neighbor, Burundi, to Belgium as the territory of Ruanda-Urundi. The portion of the German territory, never a part of the Kingdom of Rwanda, was stripped from the colony and attached to Tanganyika, which had been mandated to the British.

The Belgian government continued to rely on the Tutsi power structure for administering the country. It also consistently favoured the Tutsis where education was concerned, leading to a situation where many Tutsis were literate, while the majority of Hutus were not. Belgians educated the Tutsis in Catholic schools, which widened the ethnic rift between Hutu and Tutsi.

Belgian rule in the region was far more direct and harsh than the German. The Belgians insisted that the colony turn a profit, and this meant forcing the population to grow large quantities of coffee. Each peasant was required to devote a certain percentage of their fields to coffee and this was enforced by the Belgians and their local, mainly Tutsi, allies. An onerous corvée was also introduced, labour that was enforced by the whip - eight strokes before work each morning. This forced labour approach to colonization was condemned by many internationally, and was extremely unpopular in Rwanda. Hundreds of thousands of Rwandans immigrated to the British protectorate of Uganda, which was much wealthier and did not have the same draconian policies.

Some scholars argue that the Belgians did much to create the enmity between Hutu and Tutsi through their policies of indirect rule. As mentioned above, Hutus and Tutsis lived together as neighbors before the colonial period. However, Belgian rule solidified the racial divide. The Belgians then gave political power to the Tutsis. Due to the eugenics movement in Europe and the United States, the colonial government became concerned with the differences between Hutu and Tutsi. Scientists arrived to measure skull--and thus, they believed, brain--size. Tutsi's skulls were bigger, they were taller, and their skin was lighter. As a result of this, Europeans came to believe that Tutsis had caucasian ancestry, and were thus "superior" to Hutus. Each citizen was issued a racial identification card, which defined one as legally Hutu or Tutsi. The Belgians gave the majority of political control to the Tutsis. Tutsis began to believe the myth of their superior racial status, and exploited their power over the Hutu majority. Current academic thought is that the European emphasis on racial division led to many of the difficulties between Hutu and Tutsi in the latter part of the 20th century.

History of Rwanda - Catholic influence

The Belgian Roman Catholic Church favored the Tutsis, admiring Tutsi leadership qualities, assuming that they could be well harnessed to serve the Church's own purposes. The church evangelized also, beginning with the Tutsis, leading more Tutsis to share in the benefits that came with associating with the colonizers' Roman Catholic culture.

King Yuhi Musinga was exiled by the Belgians after he refused to be baptised. He was succeeded by his son Mutara Rudahigwa who had received a seminary education. He was baptised and renamed Charles, and he sought to bring about political changes by allowing Hutus greater access to positions of authority. He chose Catholics for his appointments.

History of Rwanda - Destabilisation

Following World War II, Ruanda-Urundi became a UN trust territory with Belgium as the administrative authority. Reforms instituted by the Belgians in the 1950s encouraged the growth of democratic political institutions but were resisted by the Tutsi traditionalists who saw in them a threat to Tutsi rule.

However, there came a major change in the 1950s, when the Belgians grew uncomfortable observing the sad plight of the Hutus, and began to suppress and then eventually came to outlaw the ubuhake and to redistribute cattle. Even though the majority of pasture lands remained under the control of the Tutsi, a situation arose where the Hutus began to feel yet a deeper sense of liberation from Tutsi rule; the Tutsis no longer seemed to be in control of cattle, the long-standing measure of a person's wealth and social position.

In addition, the Hutus began to develop a group consciousness as the Belgians instituted ethnic identity cards (in 1933, Belgium required all its Rwandan and Burundian subjects to self-identify as Tutsi, Hutu or Twa; this data appeared on the cards themselves). Yet a further step was Belgium's system of electoral representation for Rwandans. At first, the Tutsis retained total control, and then Belgium decided to make the electoral process function by means of secret ballots. Therefore, Hutus made enormous gains within the country. The Catholic Church, too, began to make a change. Suddenly they too were opposed to Tutsi mistreatment of Hutus, and began promoting Hutu equality. Tutsis were about to be removed from their traditional role as masters in Rwanda.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Colonial influence", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki