Antecedents to Modern Rwanda: The Nyiginya Kingdom

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.