Antecedents to Modern Rwanda: The Nyiginya Kingdom

Notes

221 notes Introduction 1. C. Wrigley, Kingship and State, 1. He also notes that all of the four main kingdoms of this region were quite different from each other. 2. The quantity of oral sources of information about this kingdom is extraordinary , even compared to Bunyoro or Buganda. These sources comprise over 300 historical tales and 175 different dynastic poems, among others, as well as the only considerable body of ritual texts known in Africa. 3. See articles in History in Africa from 1974 onward and a fairly recent overview by J. Vansina, Oral Tradition as History. 4. The last of these is B. Lugan, Histoire du Rwanda. J. P. Chrétien, L’Afrique des Grands Lacs, is more recent, but Chrétien writes from a wholly different perspective from the others and is less under the influence of Kagame’s vision. 5. A. Kagame, Un abrégé de l’ethno-histoire du Rwanda and Un abrégé de l’histoire du Rwanda, henceforth cited as Abrégé 1 and Abrégé 2. 6. Notably F. Nahimana, Le Rwanda. 7. Wrigley, Kingship and State, 41. 8. Elsewhere in the region such an organization was totally unknown. 9. Besides oral data we have also used some auxiliary archeological, biological , and linguistic sources. 10. For a general overview, see J. Vansina, L’Évolution du royaume rwanda à 1900 with the bibliographical supplement of the 2000 edition. See also his “Historical Tales (Ibitéekerezo) and the History of Rwanda” and “Useful Anachronisms.” 11. A critical edition of this liturgy is contained in M. d’Hertefelt and A. Coupez, La Royauté sacrée de l’ancien Rwanda. Further comment by Vansina can be found in “Useful Anachronisms.” 12. Editions of these poems can be found in Kagame, La Poésie dynastique au Rwanda and “Étude critique d’un vieux poème historique du Rwanda” as well as in A. Coupez and Th. Kamanzi, Littérature de cour au Rwanda and “Poèmes dynastiques rwanda.” C. Rugamba provides critical analysis in La Poésie face à l’histoire. 13. An edition of this list of succession is contained in A. Kagame, Inganji Karinga, 1:93–97, and in his Notion de génération appliquée à la généalogie dynastique et à l’histoire du Rwanda, 15–17. See also Nkurikiyimfura, “La révision d’une chronologie ,” 151–54. 14. Rugamba, Poésie, 328, n.80, deplores that a poem cannot be directly interpreted, commenting that “the piece would have been a first rate source of historical information, if the names it contains could have been identified.” 15. One can object that esoteric information was separate from this reservoir . But this secret knowledge related only to the liturgy of the rituals and did not include any historical information. 16. The passages in a poem that evoke kings before the one in honor of whom the poem was composed are easily interpolated at any later time and must be considered suspect. 17. The oldest publication is P. Loupias, “Tradition et légende des Batutsi sur la création du monde et leur établissement au Rwanda,” gathered at the latest in 1907, the same year that J. Czekanowski conducted the research published in Forschungen im Nil-Kongo Zwischengebiet. The latter was the first author who tried and failed to gather traditions at the court. 18. R. de Briey, “Musinga.” De Briey probably obtained this list at Nyanza, either directly from court historians through an interpreter or from a White Father. 19. Pagès, “Au Ruanda sur les bords du lac Kivu,” 377. These articles were followed up by a work that included further data: Un Royaume Hamite au centre de l’Afrique. He obtained the list of kings around 1920 (“Au Ruanda. À la cour du Mwami,” 476). 20. Schumacher arrived in Rwanda in 1907. From 1928 onward he was a full-time researcher. He left Rwanda in 1936, obtained a doctorate at the university of Vienna in 1938, finished his synthesis in 1943, and returned to Rwanda from 1950 to 1954. He was very competent in the Rwandan language. See P. Schebesta, “In Memoriam Peter Schumacher.” He differs from other authors in that he carefully cites his sources and gives some details about the discussions with his collaborators that yielded those sources. Delmas arrived in 1905 and spent his life in Rwanda as a practicing missionary until 1950. Abbé Alexis Kagame (1912–81), the most renowned Rwandan scholar and the one who has exerted the most...