The Lake Kivu region, which borders Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has often been defined by scholars in terms of conflict, violence, and separation. In contrast, this innovative study explores histories of continuities and connections across the borderland. Gillian Mathys utilises an integrated historical perspective to trace long-term processes in the region, starting from the second half of the nineteenth century and reaching to the present day. Fractured Pasts in Lake Kivu's Borderlands powerfully reshapes historical understandings of mobility, conflict, identity formation and historical narration in and across state and ecological borders. In doing so, Mathys deconstructs reductive historical myths that have continued to underpin justifications for violence in the region. Drawing on cross-border oral history research and a wealth of archival material, Fractured Pasts embraces a new and powerful perspective of the region's history.
Mathys
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I. Practices of Space: 1. Frontiers: centering Lake Kivu's societies (19th Century); II. Making the Borderlands: 2. Demarcations: drawing colonial borders (1890s–1910); 3. Separations: chiefs and chieftaincies (1910–1930s); III. Connections: 4. Contradictions: labor questions (1920s and 1930s); 5. Continuities: histories of mobility (ca. 1937–1948); 6. Asymmetries: friendship and commercial flows (1930s–1950s); IV. (Dis)connected Pasts: 7. Precursors: land, power and identity (1950s); 8. Borders: conflicted decolonizations (1959–1965); 9. Entanglements: 'Greater Rwanda' and 'balkanisation' (1990s–2022).
Mathys, Gillian
Gillian Mathys is an Associate Professor in African History at Ghent University, with particular research interests in the Great Lakes Region. She has previously been appointed as an expert to the parliamentary commission on Belgium's colonial past. Mathys has contributed articles to journals including The Journal of African History, Africa, and The Journal of Peasant Studies.
