This work examines the factors that contributed to Congolese political fragmentation encompassing the colonial administrative framework, the impact of western political and economic forces, and the transformations brought about by Christianity and western education.

Political Awakening in the Belgian Congo

Education & Teaching

Lemarchand, René

Schools & Teaching

Praeger

Remembering Genocides in Central Africa (Mass Violence in Modern History)

About the Author\nRene Lemarchand is Emeritus Professor of political science at the University of Florida, USA. He is the author of The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa and African Kingships in Perspective.\nScene of one of the biggest genocides of the last century Rwanda has become a household word, yet bitter disagreements persist as to its causes and consequences. Through a blend of personal memories and historical analysis, and informed by a lifelong experience of research in Central Africa, the author challenges conventional wisdom and suggests a new perspective for making sense of the appalling brutality that has accompanied the region’s post-independence trajectories. 
All four states adjacent to Rwanda are inhabited by Hutu and Tutsi and thus contained in germ the potential for ethnic conflict, but only in Burundi did this potential reach genocidal proportions when, in 1972, in response to a local insurrection, at least 200,000 Hutu civilians were killed by a predominantly Tutsi army. By widening his analytic lens the author shows the critical importance of the Burundi bloodshed to an understanding of the roots of the Rwanda genocide, and in later years the significance of the mass murder of Hutu civilians by Kagame’s Tutsi army, not just in Rwanda but in the Congo. 
The regional dimension of ethnic conflict, traceable to Belgian-engineered Hutu revolution in Rwanda in 1959, three years before its independence, is the principal missing piece in the genocidal puzzle of the Great Lakes region of central Africa. But this is by no means the only one. Reassembling the missing pieces within and outside Rwanda is not the least of the merits of this highly readable reassessment of a widely misunderstood human tragedy.

Reference

Routledge

Political Awakening in the Congo: The Politics of Fragmentation

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

University of California Press

This book situates Burundi in the current global debate on ethnicity by describing and analyzing the wholesale massacre of the Hutu majority by the Tutsi minority. The author refutes the government's version of these events that places blame on the former colonial government and the church. He offers documentation that identifies the source of these massacres as occurring across a socially constructed fault-line that pitted the Hutu majority's use of ethnicity as an instrument for the achievement of majority rule in parliament against the Tutsi minority's use of ethnocide to gain hegemony. By analyzing the roots of ethnicity conflict, the author derives institutional and other formulae through which conflict among the primary groups in Burundi--and elsewhere--may be mitigated. Published in cooperation with the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD).

Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide (Woodrow Wilson Center Press)

Cambridge University Press

This book situates Burundi in the current global debate on ethnicity by describing and analyzing the wholesale massacre of the Hutu majority by the Tutsi minority. The author refutes the government's version of these events that places blame on the former colonial government and the church. He offers documentation that identifies the source of these massacres as occurring across a socially constructed fault-line that pitted the Hutu majority's use of ethnicity as an instrument for the achievement of majority rule in parliament against the Tutsi minority's use of ethnocide to gain hegemony. By analyzing the roots of ethnicity conflict, the author derives institutional and other formulae through which conflict among the primary groups in Burundi--and elsewhere--may be mitigated. Published in cooperation with the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD).

History

Africa

An examination of the responses of African kingships to the challenge of modernity and political centralisation. Among the eight study cases are Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi and Swaziland.

African Kingships in Perspective: Political Change and Modernisation in Monarchical Settings

Endowed with natural resources, majestic bodies of fresh water, and a relatively mild climate, the Great Lakes region of Central Africa has also been the site of some of the world's bloodiest atrocities. In Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo-Kinshasa, decades of colonial subjugation—most infamously under Belgium's Leopold II—were followed by decades of civil warfare that spilled into neighboring countries. When these conflicts lead to horrors such as the 1994 Rwandan genocide, ethnic difference and postcolonial legacies are commonly blamed, but, with so much at stake, such simple explanations cannot take the place of detailed, dispassionate analysis.
The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa provides a thorough exploration of the contemporary crises in the region. By focusing on the historical and social forces behind the cycles of bloodshed in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo-Kinshasa, René Lemarchand challenges much of the conventional wisdom about the roots of civil strife in former Belgian Africa. He offers telling insights into the appalling cycle of genocidal violence, ethnic strife, and civil war that has made the Great Lakes region of Central Africa the most violent on the continent, and he sheds new light on the dynamics of conflict in the region.
Building on a full career of scholarship and fieldwork, Lemarchand's analysis breaks new ground in our understanding of the complex historical forces that continue to shape the destinies of one of Africa's most important regions.

The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa (National and Ethnic Conflict in the 21st Century)

University of Pennsylvania Press

Endowed with natural resources, majestic bodies of fresh water, and a relatively mild climate, the Great Lakes region of Central Africa has also been the site of some of the world's bloodiest atrocities. In Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo-Kinshasa, decades of colonial subjugation€”most infamously under Belgium's Leopold II€”were followed by decades of civil warfare that spilled into neighboring countries. When these conflicts lead to horrors such as the 1994 Rwandan genocide, ethnic difference and postcolonial legacies are commonly blamed, but, with so much at stake, such simple explanations cannot take the place of detailed, dispassionate analysis.The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa provides a thorough exploration of the contemporary crises in the region. By focusing on the historical and social forces behind the cycles of bloodshed in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo-Kinshasa, René Lemarchand challenges much of the conventional wisdom about the ro

Social Sciences

...offers Bender's outstanding analysis of the U.S. Angolian intervention... two stimulating essays on the regional role of the CIA (by Stephen Weissman and Lemarchand himself), and two divergent views of the best U.S. policy toward South Africa by William J. Foltz and R. Hunt Davis, Jr.

American Policy in Southern Africa

University Press of America

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lemarchand, René. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Lemarchand, René

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lemarchand, René. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Political Awakening in the Belgian Congo

Remembering Genocides in Central Africa (Mass Violence in Modern History)

Remembering Genocides in Central Africa (Mass Violence in Modern History)

Political Awakening in the Congo: The Politics of Fragmentation

Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide (Woodrow Wilson Center Press)

Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide (Woodrow Wilson Center Press)

African Kingships in Perspective: Political Change and Modernisation in Monarchical Settings

The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa (National and Ethnic Conflict in the 21st Century)

The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa (National and Ethnic Conflict in the 21st Century)

American Policy in Southern Africa