ABSTRACT
The German colonial state played on the relative strengths of the monarchies in Rwanda and Burundi. The colonial state in Rwanda and Burundi was pale in its imitation of a European state. This invites the reclassification of the colonial state here as a platform which was open to contestation and external appropriation, rather than existing as a cohesive unit of political power. Much historical writing since decolonisation has tried to resurrect connections between the controlling centre and indigenous colonised societies. Missionary education represented a technological shock to Rwanda and Burundi and disrupted its social institutions, especially the family. The beneficial impacts of denominational competition on educational achievements and even eventual democratisation have been demonstrated in other colonised territories. Colonialism, Christianity and democracy are all routinely imagined as exclusively and permanently European. Burundi’s ecological crisis of the nineteenth century meant that it was already considerably weakened before the advent of European colonialism.
