Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T07:37:55.194Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Canonical Conventions in Rwanda: Four Myths of Recent Historiography in Central Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

David Newbury
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

At a time of significant change in the in the practice of African history, this article is an appeal for a renewed respect for conventional historiography – referring both to careful acquaintance with earlier work and to the practice of historical analysis. Focusing on Rwanda, the argument is presented at four levels. First, it identifies four myths evident in recent presentations on Rwandan history. Second it assesses a work that avoids such assumptions by drawing on broader empirical sources than is the norm. It then examines a work that, while highlighting an important theme, neglects much of the historical work done on Rwanda over the past forty years. It concludes by proposing a way out of such “dead-end discourses.”

Type
Critical Source Analysis
Information
History in Africa , Volume 39 , 2012 , pp. 41 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adenaike, Carolyn Keyes, and Vansina, Jan (eds.), In Pursuit of History: Fieldwork in Africa (Portsmouth NH, Heinemann, 1996).Google Scholar
Arnold, David, and Hardiman, David (eds.), Essays in Honor of Ranajit Guha (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Bucher, Tim, Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart (New York, Grove Press, 2008).Google Scholar
Chrétien, Jean-Pierre, “La révolte de Ndungutse. Forces traditionnelles et pression colonial au Rwanda allemande,” Revue française d'Histoire d'Outre-Mer 59 (1972), 645–680.Google Scholar
Chrétien, Jean-Pierre, “Des sédentaires devenus migrants: Les motifs des départs des Barundais et des Rwandais vers l'Uganda (1920-1961),” Cultures et Développement 10–1 (1978), 71–101.Google Scholar
Chrétien, Jean-Pierre, “Confronting the Unequal Exchange between the Oral and the Written,” in: Newbury, David and Jewsiewicki, Bogomil, (eds.), African Historiographies: What History for Which Africa? (Newbury Park CA, Sage, 1986), 75–90.Google Scholar
Chrétien, Jean-Pierre, The Great Lakes of Africa: 2000 Years of History (Cambridge, Berg, 2003).Google Scholar
Chrétien, Jean-Pierre, Dupaquier, Jean-François, Kabanda, Marcel and Ngarambe, Joseph (eds.), Rwanda: Les Médias du Genocide (Paris, Karthala, 1995).Google Scholar
Chubaka, Bishikwabo, and Newbury, David, “Recent Historical Research in the Area of Lake Kivu,” History in Africa 7 (1980), 23–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Codere, Helen, “Power in Rwanda,” Anthropologica (n.s) 4-1 (1962), 45–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Codere, Helen, Rwanda: The Biography of an African Society (Tervuren, Musée Royal de l'Afrique Centrale, 1973).Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick, “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking African Historiography,” American Historical Review 99–6 (1994), 1516–1545.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Codere, Helen, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1996).Google Scholar
Codere, Helen, Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2002).Google Scholar
Codere, Helen, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2005).Google Scholar
Cruvellier, Thierry, Court of Remorse: Inside the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Des Forges, Alison, “‘The Drum is Greater than the Shout:’ The 1912 Rebellion in Northern Rwanda,” in: Crummey, Donald (ed.), Banditry, Rebellion and Social Protest in Africa (Portsmouth NH, Heinemann, 1986), 311–331.Google Scholar
Des Forges, Alison, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (New York, Human Rights Watch, 1999).Google Scholar
Des Forges, Alison, Defeat is the Only Bad News: Rwanda under Musinga, 1896-1931 (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Des Forges, Alison, “Court and Corporations in the Development of the Rwandan State,” (unpublished manuscript).Google Scholar
Richard, Dowden, Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles (New York, Public Affairs, 2009).Google Scholar
Eltringham, Nigel, Accounting for Horror: Post-Genocide Debates in Rwanda (London Pluto Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Nigel, Eltringham, “The Past is Elsewhere: The Paradoxes of Proscribing Ethnicity in Post-Genocide Rwanda,” in: Straus, Scott and Waldorf, Lars (eds.), Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights after Mass Violence (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), 269–282.Google Scholar
Feierman, Steven, “African History and the Dissolution of World History,” in: Bates, Robert H., Mudimbe, Victor Y. and O'Barr, Jean F. (eds.), Africa and the Disciplines: The Contribution of Research in Africa to the Social Sciences and Humanities (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1993), 167–212.Google Scholar
Feierman, Steven, “Africa in History: The End of Universal Narratives,” in: Prakash, Gyan (ed.), After Colonialism (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995), 40–65.Google Scholar
Feierman, Steven, “Colonizers, Scholars, and the Creation of Invisible Histories,” in: Bonnell, Victoria E. and Hunt, Lynn (eds.), Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999), 182–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freedman, Sara Warshauer, Weinstein, Henry M., Murphy, Karen and Longman, Timothy, “Teaching History after Identity-Based Conflicts: The Rwanda Experience,” Comparative Education Review 52–4 (2008), 663–690.Google Scholar
Freedman, Sara Warshauer, Weinstein, Henry M., Murphy, Karen and Longman, Timothy, “Teaching History in Post-Genocide Rwanda,” in: Straus, Scott and Waldorf, Lars (eds.), Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights after Mass Violence (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), 297–315.Google Scholar
Gravel, Pierre, Remera: A Community in Eastern Rwanda (The Hague, Mouton, 1968).Google Scholar
Fujii, Lee Ann, Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Gourevitch, Philip, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With All Our Family (New York, Farar, Strauss & Giraux, 1999).Google Scholar
Guha, Ranajit, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Durham, Duke University Press, 1999 [originally, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1983]).Google Scholar
Guha, Ranajit (ed.), A Subaltern Studies Reader, 1986-1995 (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1997).Google Scholar
Guichaoua, André, Rwanda 1994: Les politiques du génocide à Butare (Paris, Karthala, 2005).Google Scholar
Hanson, Holly, Landed Obligation (Portsmouth NH, Heinemann, 2003).Google Scholar
d'Hertefelt, Marcel, “Le Rwanda,” in: d'Hertefelt, Marcel, Trouwborst, Albert A. and Scherer, J.H. (eds.) Les anciens royaumes de la zone interlacustre mérionale (Tervuren, Musée Royale de l'Afrique Centrale, 1962) PAGES.Google Scholar
Henige, David, Oral Historiography (New York, Longman 1982)Google Scholar
Henige, David, Historical Evidence and Argument (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press 2005).Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Ranger, Terence O. (eds.) The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983).Google Scholar
Hopkins, Elizabeth, “The Nyabingi Cult of Southwestern Uganda,” in: Rotberg, Robert I. and Mazrui, Ali A. (eds.), Protest and Power in Black Africa (New York, Oxford University Press, 1970), 258–336.Google Scholar
Isaacman, Allen, “Legacies of Engagement: Scholarship Informed by Political Commitment,” African Studies Review 46–1 (2003), 1–41.Google Scholar
Iggers, Georg, and Wang, Q. Edward, A Global History of Modern Historiography (Harlow, Pearson Longman, 2008).Google Scholar
Kagame, Alexis, La notion de generation appliquée à la généalogie dynastique et à l'histoire du Rwanda dès Xè-XIè siècles à nos jours (Bruxelles, ARSOM, 1959).Google Scholar
Kagame, Alexis, Les Milices du Rwanda précolonial (Bruxelles, ARSOM, 1962).Google Scholar
Kagame, Alexis, Un abrégé de l'ethnnohistoire du Rwanda (Butare, Editions Universitaires du Rwanda, 1972).Google Scholar
de Lame, Danielle, A Hill Among a Thousand: Transformations and Ruptures in Rural Rwanda (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2005).Google Scholar
Larson, Pier, Ocean of Letters: Language and Creolization in an Indian Ocean Diaspora (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Lee, Christopher J., “Subaltern Studies and African Studies,” History Compass 3–1 (2005), 1–13.Google Scholar
Lemarchand, René, Rwanda and Burundi (New York, Praeger, 1970).Google Scholar
Lemarchand, René, The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lemarchand, René (ed.), Forgotten Genocides: Oblivion, Denial, and Memory (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Mamdani, Mahmood, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Maquet, Jacques-Jean, The Premise of Inequality in Rwanda (London, Oxford University Press, 1961 [1954]).Google Scholar
Melvern, Linda, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in the Rwandan Genocide (London, Pluto Press, 2000).Google Scholar
Newbury, Catharine, “Ethnicity in Rwanda: the Case of Kinyaga,” Africa 48–1 (1978), 17–29.Google Scholar
Newbury, Catharine, The Cohesion of Oppression: Clientship and Ethnicity in Rwanda, 1860-1960 (New York, Columbia University Press, 1988).Google Scholar
Newbury, Catharine, The Cohesion of Oppression (New York, Columbia University Press, 1989).Google Scholar
Newbury, David, “Africanist Historiography in the United States: Metamorphosis or Metastasis?” in: Newbury, David and Jewsiewicki, Bogomil, (eds.), African Historiographies: What History for Which Africa? (Newbury Park CA, Sage, 1986), 151–165.Google Scholar
Newbury, David, “‘Bunyabungo:’ The Western Frontier in Rwanda,” in: Kopytoff, Igor (ed.), The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1987), 162–192.Google Scholar
Newbury, David, “The Rwakayihura Famine of 1928-29: A Nexus of Colonial Rule in Rwanda,” Histoire Sociale de l'Afrique de l'Est (Paris, Karthala 1991), 269–277.Google Scholar
Newbury, David, “Trick Cyclists? Recontextualizing Rwandan Dynastie Chronology,” History in Africa 21 (1994), 191–217.Google Scholar
Newbury, David, “Precolonial Burundi and Rwanda: Local Loyalties, Regional Royalties,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 34–2 (2001), 255–314.Google Scholar
Newbury, David, “Returning Refugees: Four Historical Patterns of ‘Coming Home’ to Rwanda,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 47–2 (2005), 252–285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newbury, David, and Newbury, Catharine, “Bringing the Peasants Back In: Agrarian Themes in the Construction and Corrosion of Statist Historiography in Rwanda,” American Historical Review 105–3 (2000), 832–877.Google Scholar
Newbury, M. Catharine, see: Newbury, Catharine.Google Scholar
Nkurikiyimfura, Jean-Népomucène, “La revision d'une chronologie: le cas du royaume du Rwanda,” in: Perrot, Claude-Hélène, Gonnin, Gilbert and Nahimana, Ferdinand (eds.), Sources orales de l'histoire de l'Afrique (Paris, Editions du centre national de la recherche scientifique 1989).Google Scholar
Ntaganzwa, I., “The Bitter Feud Between Vansina and the late Dr. Kagame Continues,” (New York, 2002) (document circulated as independent electronic communications; available from this author on request).Google Scholar
Ntaganzwa, I., “Jan Vansina'a Obsession with the Late Alexis Kagame Continues: Comments on Jan Vansina's New Book Le Rwanda Ancien,” (New York, March 2005) (document circulated as independent electronic communications; available from this author on request).Google Scholar
Peskin, Victor, International Justice in Rwanda and the Balkans: Virtual Trials and the Struggle for State Cooperation (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008).Google Scholar
Peterson, Derek, and Macola, Giacomo (eds.), Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa (Athens OH, Ohio University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Pottier, Johan, Re-Imagining Rwanda: Conflict, Survival and Disinformation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prunier, Gérard, Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and The Making of a Continental Catastrophe (New York, Oxford University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Rennie, J.K., “The Precolonial Kingdom of Rwanda: A Reinterpretation,” Transafrican Journal of History 2–2 (1972), 11–53.Google Scholar
Reyntjens, Filip, The Great African War: Congo and Regional Geopolitics, 1996-2006 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reyntjens, Filip, “Waging (Civil) War Abroad: Rwanda and the DRC,” in: Straus, Scott and Waldorf, Lars (eds.), Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights after Mass Violence (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), 132–151.Google Scholar
Reyntjens, Filip, and Lemarchand, René, “Mass Murder in Eastern Congo, 1996-1997,” in: Lemarchand, René (ed.) Forgotten Genocides: Oblivion, Denial, and Memory (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 20–36.Google Scholar
Rumiya, Jean, Le Rwanda sous le regime du mandat Belge (Paris, Harmattan, 1992).Google Scholar
Rusagara, Frank Kanyaro, “The Military in Conflict Management: The RPA in Post-Genocide Rwanda (1994-2002),” MA thesis, Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies, University of Nairobi (2003).Google Scholar
Rusagara, Frank Kanyaro, with Maura, Gitura and Nyirimanzi, Gérard, Resilience of a Nation: A History of the Military in Rwanda (Kigali, Fountain Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Schatzberg, Michael, Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa: Father, Family, Food (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Scott, James C., Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1985).Google Scholar
Scott, James C., Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1990).Google Scholar
Scott, James C., Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1998).Google Scholar
Scott, James C., The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Semujanga, Josias, Origins of Rwandan Genocide (Amherst NY, Humanity Press, 1998).Google Scholar
Stearns, Jason, Dancing with Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa (New York, Public Affairs, 2011).Google Scholar
Stearns, Jason, and Barello, Frederico, “Bad Karma: Accountability for Rwandan Crimes in the Congo,” in: Straus, Scott and Waldorf, Lars (eds.), Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights after Mass Violence (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), 152–169.Google Scholar
Straus, Scott, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power and War in Rwanda (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Taylor, Christopher, Sacrifice as Terror: The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 (New York, Berg, 1999).Google Scholar
Thomson, Susan, “Reeducation for Reconciliation: Participant Observations on Ingando,” in: Straus, Scott and Waldorf, Lars (eds.), Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights after Mass Violence (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), 331–339.Google Scholar
Turner, Thomas, The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth, and Reality (New York, Zed Books, 2007).Google Scholar
United Nations Organization, “Report of the Mapping Exercise: Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1993-2003,” (1 October 2010).Google Scholar
Uvin, Peter, “Prejudice, Crisis, and Genocide in Rwanda,” African Studies Review 40–2 (1997), 91–115.Google Scholar
Vansina, Jan, L'évolution du royaume Rwanda (Bruxelles, ARSOM 1962 [2000]).Google Scholar
Vansina, Jan, Le Rwanda ancien: Le royaume nyiginya (Paris, Karthala, 2001).Google Scholar
Vansina, Jan, Antecedents to Modem Rwanda: The Nyiginya Kingdom (Madison, University of Wisconsin, 2004).Google Scholar
Vidal, Claudine, “Alexis Kagame entre mémoire et histoire,” History in Africa 15 (1988), 493–504.Google Scholar
Vidal, Claudine, “Alexis Kagame,” in: Vidal, Claudine (ed.), Sociologie des Passions (Paris, Karthala, 1991), 45–61.Google Scholar
Waldorf, Lars, “Instrumentalizing Genocide: the RPF's Campaign against ‘Genocide Ideology”,” in: Straus, Scott and Waldorf, Lars (eds.), Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights after Mass Violence (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), 48–66.Google Scholar
Weiss, Herbert, Political Protest in the Congo: The Parti Solidaire Africain during the Independence Struggk (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1967).Google Scholar
West, Henry, The Mailo System in Buganda (Entebbe, The Government Printer, 1965).Google Scholar
West, Henry, Land Policy in Buganda (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1972).Google Scholar
White, Hayden, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact,” in: White, Hayden, Tropics of Discourse — Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).Google Scholar
Young, M. Crawford, and Turner, Thomas, The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1985).Google Scholar
Zachernuk, Philip, Colonial Subjects: An African Intelligentsia and Atlantic Ideas (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 2000).Google Scholar