ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by presenting some theoretical claims concerning the modern colonial state. In particular, it discusses Zygmunt Bauman's notion of the order-building 'gardening' state and its tension with a romantic orientation towards the preservation of difference. In the cases of Burundi and Rwanda, these forms of difference were informed and framed by a racial framework elaborated by the early European explorers of the region, known as the Hamitic hypothesis. Next, the chapter situates colonial rule in the country, first considering the establishment of the German colonial state before discussing the Belgian takeover and the League of Nations mandate received in 1925. It then discusses the effect of the shaping of colonial policies on predominantly racial grounds on the identities embedded within dynamic histories of precolonial state formation. The chapter finally argues that this formative experience of modernity would come to possess a great significance both in movements towards autonomous interpretations of modernity and in postcolonial mass violence.
