King Kigeri IV Rwabugili was the ruler of the Kingdom of Rwanda from 1853 to 1895. He was of Tutsi descent, and is known for being the most powerful king to rule during this time period. He was also the first King in Rwanda’s history to come into contact with Europeans. His interests lied heavily in the military, and chose to establish an army equipped with guns in order to forbid foreigners from entering his kingdom.
The people that settled in this region were a mixture of the Tutsi and Hutu clans. The relationships between them was not of perfect equality, but were also not particularly problematic either. The Hutu occupied the majority of the population, covering around 82-85%. They were mostly poor peasants who were thought to possess healing power and agricultural skills. On the other hand, the Tutsi were known to reign over the Hutu- being mainly compromised of upper class individuals or those of noble standing. Intermarriage played a part in bringing the two groups together. Through intermarriage, it was possible to change from a Hutu into a Tutsi and vise versa. Intermarriage also allowed both groups to be able to sometimes come to a mutually beneficial agreement through trade and hold power in the other clan’s decision making. Within the royal court, there were ceremonial roles for both the Hutu and Tutsi clans. Strangely enough, peoples at the time believed that the main distinction between the Hutu and Tutsi was only ethnicity, rather than their obvious differences in their populations socioeconomic standing.
Throughout time, the Tutsi King Mwami Rwaburgiri made the decision to centralize power by distributing land among individuals rather than allowing it to be passed down through lineage groups. This proved as a disadvantage to the Hutu chiefs because much of their land was passed down through lineage, and individually they were not chosen to occupy land. King Rwaburgiri then imposed the patronage system, which allowed Tutsi chiefs to demand manual labor in return for the right for Hutus to occupy their land.
Rwaburgiri played a huge part in transforming Rwanda into an expansionist state. He did not believe that ethnic identifies held any importance, and instead decided to label all conquered people as “Hutu.” This abolished the Hutus socially and politically, and helped to create the idea that the names Hutu and Tutsi were a socioeconomic distinction rather than ethnic. Rwaburgiri believed that one could kwihutura, or “shed Hutuness” by accumulating wealth and rising through the social hierarchy.
To be honest, I felt extremely strained while writing this entire blog. There was not much information about pre-colonial Rwanda available, and the information that I found was contradicting and vague. I am still uncertain as to how a kingdom was borne to Rwanda, or around what time a hierarchy emerged. Whenever I would try to piece together a timeline, I would find information that proved my previous invalid. I tried to find articles that mentioned religion or language, but had no luck. I suppose this could be due to an extreme lack of documentation- for oral was the chief medium in that era.