ABSTRACT
The special nature of Rwanda in the modern Western imagination emerges out of one word: "genocide." Virtually all accounts written about Rwanda since 1994 take the genocide as their jumping-off point, whether the subject be economics, agriculture, land reform, religion, food security, ethnography, politics, government, or geography. There is widespread agreement that the genocide was a social event of such widespread importance that it merits this central position in descriptions of modern Rwanda. In this respect, the Rwandan genocide can perhaps be compared to the role of World War II in French, British, German, Chinese, Russian, and Japanese history, and the Civil War in American. Since 1994, a scholarly consensus over what happened in Rwanda has developed. Genocide by its nature involves attempts to obscure actions and devalue the interpretations of political opponents; thus, reassembling this story has been a laborious process.
