Kingdom of Rwanda
| Ubwami bw'u Rwanda (Kinyarwanda) Kingdom of Rwanda (German) Royaume du Rwanda (French) |
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| 1350-1962 | |||||
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| Official language |
Kinyarwanda from 1885 German from 1922 French |
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| Capital | Nyanza (royal city) | ||||
| Form of government | monarchy | ||||
| Head of state , also head of government | Kings of Rwanda | ||||
| surface | 26,338 km² | ||||
| currency | Rwanda Franc | ||||
| founding | 14th Century | ||||
| independence | 1961 | ||||
| resolution | 1962 | ||||
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The Kingdom of Banyarwanda (also known as the Kingdom of Rwanda ), founded in the 14th century by a cattle-raising people, the Tutsi , was a kingdom that lasted into the second half of the 20th century.
It covered the territory of the modern state of the Republic of Rwanda before it came under the influence of European powers. The indirect colonial rule that began gradually around 1897 as part of German East Africa was replaced from 1920 by a Belgian administration on behalf of the League of Nations .
After the dissolution of Ruanda-Urundi , the Kingdom of Rwanda received autonomy on July 25, 1956, and on June 1, 1962, the kingdom was dissolved and converted into a republic.
history
The Kingdom of Rwanda came into being in the fifteenth century when a local ruler managed to take over several of its neighbors. The kingdom encompassed much more than the area of today's Republic of Rwanda. The majority of the population, 82 to 85%, were arable farming people, the Hutu . Although some Hutu were to be found among the nobility, the Tutsi were the country's upper class. Although the ethnic groups were mixed, the Hutu mostly remained poor farmers. In general, the kings known as Mwamis were Tutsi.
Before the nineteenth century, the Tutsi had military power, while the Hutu had supernatural power. In this capacity, the Mwami ( Abiiru ) advisory staff consisted entirely of Hutu and exercised great influence. In the middle of the 18th century, however, the abiiru was increasingly marginalized.
As the kings centralized their power and authority, they distributed land between individuals instead of establishing it downwards through lineage groups, many of which were hereditary chiefs of Hutu. Most of the chiefs appointed by the Mwamis were Tutsi. A redistribution of land occurred between 1860 and 1895 by order of Mwami Rwabugiri and resulted in an enforced system of patronage in which the Hutu had to provide labor services to the Tutsi chiefs. This system first brought the Hutu serf status , with the Tutsi chiefs as their feudal landlords.
Under Mwami Rwabugiri, Rwanda became an expansionist state. All newly conquered peoples were officially classified as "Hutu" from now on, the modernized state did not bother to recognize the ethnic identities of the ethnic groups. The title “Hutu” became the epitome of a trans-ethnic identity combined with submission. The Hutu were socially and politically disenfranchised, which helped solidify the idea that the terms "Hutu" and "Tutsi" were socio-economic in nature, not ethnic . Indeed, one could get rid of kwihutura, or "Hututum", by ascending the social hierarchy and accumulating wealth.
In 1961 there was a referendum on the monarchy , in which the voters voted with a large majority against the incumbent King Kigeri V and decided to convert Rwanda into a republic. In the 1960 local elections, women were given the right to vote. In the Legislative Decree of Rwanda - Urundi (LDRU) N ° 02/269 , enacted on August 17, 1961 by the Belgian administration of the UN mandate area, women were granted universal suffrage at national level and in the elections to the Legislative Assembly on August 25 First exercised in September 1961. Universal suffrage for all adults was confirmed upon independence in 1962. In 1961 women were given the right to be elected to all offices except for the presidency. The right to stand as a candidate for this office was only granted to them in 1978 in the new constitution.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Mahmood Mamdani : When victims become Killers. Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 2001, ISBN 0-691-05821-0 , p. 62: "Mandani recounts a historical narrative indicating the importance of a Hutu diviner in the formation of the Rwandan state" .
- ↑ Manus I. Midlarsky: The killing trap. Genocide in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 2005, ISBN 0-521-81545-2 , p. 162.
- ^ A b Johan Pottier: Re-imagining Rwanda. Conflict, Survival and Disinformation in the late Twentieth Century (= African Studies Series 102). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 2002, ISBN 0-521-81366-2 , pp. 12, 13 and 14.
- ↑ a b June Hannam, Mitzi Auchterlonie, Katherine Holden: International Encyclopedia of Women's Suffrage. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara, Denver, Oxford 2000, ISBN 1-57607-064-6 , pp. 6-7.
- ↑ a b - New Parline: the IPU's Open Data Platform (beta). In: data.ipu.org. August 17, 1961, accessed October 6, 2018 .