Antecedents to modern Rwanda : the Nyiginya Kingdom

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The oral sources

1. Central Rwanda on the eve of the emergence of the kingdom

The country and its inhabitants

Fields and herds: subsistence activities

Kinship and society

Polities

2. The Rwanda of Ndori

The foundation of the kingdom

Subsequent military campaigns: conquest or raids?

Government: the ritual institutions

Instruments of government: the corporations

The realm

3. Toward the centralization of power

The seizure of the herds and the land

The armies

At the hub: court, king, and elites

The recasting of royal ideology during Rejugira's reign

The weight of the state

4. Government in the eighteenth century

Government from Gisanura to Rwaka

Government under Rujugira and Ndabarasa

Foreign relations under Gisanura and Mazimpaka

Foreign relations under Rujugira and Ndabarasa

5. Social transformations in the nineteenth century

The transformations of society

Hutu and Tutsi

6. The triumph of the great families and its consequences

Civil war and the supremacy of the elites

Struggles for power at Gahindiro's and Rwogera's courts

Expansion of the kingdom eastward and international trade

A spontaneous expansion toward Lake Kivu and the land of the volcanoes?

7. Nightmares: the age of Rwabugiri (1867-1897)

Political crisis and wars from 1867-1889

Isolation breached and the hatching of a coup d'Etat

The nightmare of violence used as a political tool

A balance sheet

History and the present