Germany claimed Rwanda in the late nineteenth century and governed indirectly through the existing monarchy. After the First World War, Belgium took over the territory under a League of Nations mandate and moved toward far more intrusive administration.
Belgian policy hardened social categories into fixed, documented identities, introduced identity cards, and reorganized chieftaincies. Forced labour, cash-crop requirements, and mission schooling reshaped daily life in every hill community.
Political parties emerged in the late 1950s amid rising tension, culminating in the 1959 upheaval, the abolition of the monarchy, and independence on 1 July 1962. The unresolved questions of that transition shaped the decades that followed.