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164 7 Nightmares The Age of Rwabugiri (1867–1897) The overwhelming impression one is left with after a study of the age of Rwabugiri and his successors is that of the unrelenting rise of a tide of terror that starts at court and engulfs the whole country, finally erupting into a social crisis that has now lasted for well over a century. We witness here the tragic paradox of increasing centralization (for the court comes to control what happens elsewhere more and more), which sows anarchy as it unfolds. Yet it is not this theme that has struck historians. In the classical historiography and for some other historians as well, King Rwabugiri was such a great man that his reign put its stamp on an epoch.1 Supposedly he wrung the reins of power from the elites whom he subdued by means of terror and he established a dictatorial power that, all things considered, turned out to be beneficial. The violence that accompanied his reign was merely unfortunate but a necessary by-product of the process of building a large centralized state: “One does not make an omelet without breaking eggs.” For he centralized the country while launching a set of wars that considerably enlarged it. All the changes that had occurred since the previous period owed to his personality. Authoritarian , impetuous, vigorous, and pitiless, he had an unclouded political vision and was a military genius. But one can reject this interpretation. Rwabugiri was not an extraordinary personage and his reign did not constitute an age apart. One can underline the continuities with the preceding period, not only during the regency, which no one denies, but also beyond this, arguing that while the major directions of a new social and political evolution emerge during his reign and the use of violence with its whole train of consequences starts to become especially prominent, nevertheless, there were precedents for both. The trend did not change, and would not in fact change until after the Belgian conquest of 1916.2 Despite the fact that he appointed newcomers to important posts, Rwabugiri did not succeed in breaking the hold of the ancient elites, so that, barely a year after his demise , one group among them was able to seize power. In this view, increasing centralization was a by-product of the struggles among the factions at court; the kingdom’s wars, for instance, were even more strongly characterized by the vicissitudes of these internal struggles than they had been up to then. As to the king’s personality, it needs to be emphasized that he was thoughtless, that he did not succeed in fashioning a clear long-term policy, and that his impetuousness only manifested itself in the unthinking way he reacted to the demands of the moment. Moreover , his authoritarian and irascible character went hand-in-hand with limitless distrust and a lack of personal discipline that made him but prey for the factions at court. As to his military talents, they were rather modest. Which of these two versions should one choose? As one has seen, we have treated the passage of time between 1867 and 1897 as a separate period, despite evident continuities. This is a period of transition, no doubt, but one during which the dynamics of power are no longer what they were hitherto, and that the alliance of the Germans with, in particular , the court of queen mother Kanjogera, would transform again. To allow for a more nuanced understanding of both the period and Rwabugiri , we will briefly describe the main events that characterized the internal and external policies of the kingdom at the time. But we refuse to be drawn into a set of speculations concerning the king’s personality because to us this is a question of secondary importance. It is more important to follow the rise of the tide of violence and its effects, which typifies the period and that will continue to affect the next one.3 Political Crises and Wars from 1867 to 1889 Internal politics and externals wars are so intertwined during this period that we will treat them together, and it is the internal politics, rather than the external wars, that are the driving force shaping the kingdom at the time. The dynamics are characterized by a succession of major upsets in the balance of power at the court with an apparent periodicity of about seven to nine years.4 Each of these cycles was followed by a...

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