Rwanda Urundi

Overview of UN / League of Nations mandates in Africa and the Middle East

10 Rwanda Urundi

Rwanda-Urundi was the name of a Belgian mandate - or UN trustee area , which comprised the national territories of today's states of Rwanda and Burundi .

history

Follower of King Kasliwami in Urundi, today's Burundi

As part of the colonial division of Africa by the European powers, the German Empire gradually took possession of the two kingdoms of Rwanda and Urundi after the Berlin Africa Conference and incorporated them into its " protected area " German East Africa from around 1897 . The German Reich practiced the system of " indirect rule ", i. In other words, it left the existing structures largely untouched and the kings in office, insofar as they cooperated with German sovereignty.

Postage stamp with the imprint "Belgian occupation of German East Africa" ​​for the Rwanda-Urundi area

After the end of German colonial rule during the First World War , the League of Nations placed the two kingdoms, united in Rwanda-Urundi, under the mandate of Belgian administration in 1919/20. From 1925, the area was administered as the 7th Province of the Belgian Congo , with formal maintenance of mandate status. After the League of Nations was replaced by the United Nations (UN), Belgium administered Rwanda-Urundi as a UN trust territory from 1946 . Belgium too largely followed the principle of indirect rule and supported the Tutsi monarchs, such as Mwambutsa IV. In Urundi , which did not help to reduce the already existing ethnic and social tensions between the privileged Tutsi minority and the broad mass of the Hutu .

On July 1, 1962, Belgium released Rwanda-Urundi, separated into the states of Rwanda and Burundi , under the supervision of the UN .

Belgian administrators in Rwanda-Urundis

Royal commissioners

List of the "Commissaires Royaux" 1916 to 1926

• Justin Malfeyt (November 1916 - May 1919)
• Alfred Frédéric Gérard Marzorati (May 1919 – August 1926)

Governors General of the Belgian Congo

List of the “Gouverneurs Généraux du Congo Belge” from 1926 to 1962

• Alfred Frédéric Gérard Marzorati (August 1926 – February 1929)
• Louis Joseph Postiaux (February 1929 – July 1930)
• Charles Henri Joseph Voisin (July 1930 – August 1932)
• Eugène Jacques Pierre Louis Jungers (August 1932 – July 1946)
• Maurice Simon (July 1946 – August 1949)
• Léon Antoine Marie Pétillon (August 1949 – January 1952)
• Alfred Claeys Boùùaert (January 1952 – March 1955)
• Jean-Paul Harroy (March 1955 – January 1962)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Helmut Strizek: Donated colonies. Rwanda and Burundi under German rule (= highlights of colonial history. Vol. 4). With an essay on the development up to the present. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-86153-390-1 .
2. ↑ Winfried Speitkamp : German Colonial History (= Reclams Universal Library . 17047). Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-15-017047-8 , p. 52 f.