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Chapter 5. The Campaigns of Rwabugiri
- Ohio University Press
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M M M 5 THE CAMPAIGNS OF RWABUGIRI Kigeri Rwabugiri, king of Rwanda from to , transformed Rwandan kingship. As the last independent king of Rwanda before European intrusion , he is remembered in monumental terms. Within the royal domains, he reconfigured internal power relations by appointing delegates to positions of power dependent on him alone, thus confronting the entrenched power of the aristocratic lineages of the court. But Rwabugiri was most renowned for his foreign military expeditions: his reign was marked by almost continuous campaigns directed against virtually every neighboring society. Military success became one of the most assured pathways to court status and power in Rwandan politics. The booty from such expeditions provided resources in the hands of the king with which he rewarded his political favorites; under Rwabugiri internal politics was closely linked to external warfare. This chapter presents an overview of Rwabugiri’s military campaigns: it establishes the chronology of these expeditions and examines the evolution of Rwabugiri’s military objectives, organization, and strategies . This overview of his military career also sets the broader context of his wars, providing historical perspective on the series of campaigns waged against the people of Ijwi Island over a twenty-five-year period. (The next chapter provides a case study of his campaigns against Ijwi.) K K R the history of Rwanda in the late nineteenth century. Renowned as the quintessential military monarch of Rwandan history, Rwabugiri embarked on military expeditions virtually every year of his long reign (–). The effect of this within Rwanda was momentous , for through his army commands he sought to circumvent the intricate politics of the dominant factions at the court, and by his constant movement he introduced the court and its power into many regions of Rwanda. However, these expeditions were no less significant in their effects on neighboring societies, particularly those contiguous to Lake Kivu. In both political and military terms, Rwabugiri’s armies refashioned the Lake Kivu Rift Valley in the late nineteenth century; any history of the region has to take account of Rwabugiri—and his strategies, his tactics, and his objectives. The Rift Valley societies were the areas of his most enduring and most intense attention: his first and his final campaigns were directed there, and he returned to attack the various kingdoms of the western Rift Valley consistently during the intervening years of his long reign. Yet these Kivu expeditions were but a portion of his broader military career. Continuous military expeditions were his mark; accompanying his armies, Rwabugiri traveled through every region of Rwanda and attacked all the neighboring countries except Karagwe to the east, across the Kagera River. (Karagwe had a special status in Rwandan myth as the place claimed from which Ruganzu, another royal hero, returned to establish the Nyiginya dynasty.¹) Such mobility was to have enormous repercussions internally, within Rwanda, as well as externally, on the societies attacked.² Army structures were the principal framework of his political formation as well as of his military success , and army expeditions were to have a dramatic impact on the internal population of Rwanda as well as on those attacked; for the consolidation of army organizations, and the demand for a wide range of material support for these armies, brought about a dramatic shift in the internal character of political power in the kingdom. Powers formerly retained by local authorities became increasingly concentrated in the hands of the king and his court (as indeed was happening in other states of the Interlacustrine area during the same period).³ The expeditions, therefore, were significant not only for their expansionist goals or external ramifications; through recruitment, through demands for food, through the requisition of materials and labor for constructing and provisioning the royal court, and through the reconfiguration of local social hierarchies, many common people were drawn into the vortex of Rwabugiri’s constant miliM M The Lake Kivu Arena tary preoccupations. While Rwandans at the central court benefited from the campaigns abroad, the growth of the glory of the court had its internal costs. Outside the country his expeditions affected the politics of the states, and certainly the lives of the people attacked.Yet in these regions the effects were not enduring ; indeed, one could argue that the internal ramifications were greater than the external effects. Given the importance of the military activities for his reign as a whole, an analysis of these campaigns serves as a valuable foundation for understanding this...
