First episode in a series of exclusive interviews between African Facts and the French historian Jean-Pierre Chrétien. He recounts his early days in the region and the beginnings of his research.
This is his first interview in ten years. A leading historian of the Great Lakes region and an honorary research director at the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research), Jean-Pierre Chrétien is the author of several reference works and is one of the foremost experts on pre-colonial and contemporary Burundi and Rwanda. He has agreed to give a series of exclusive interviews to African Facts.
A pioneer in regional research since the 1960s, he has witnessed the dashed hopes, rise of racism and ideologies, unspeakable horrors of genocide, and attempts to understand, judge and rebuild. His work is an invaluable addition to our understanding of these events.
But before becoming a leading voice in the history of the Great Lakes region, Jean-Pierre Chrétien was a young aid worker who was amazed by the richness of a region that had long been confined to colonial clichés. He helped shed new light on its history and culture. So that is where we will begin.
African Facts: What led you, as a historian, to specialise in Africa, and in particular the Great Lakes region?
Jean-Pierre Chrétien: I’ll answer you frankly: chance.
That takes us back to 1964. At the time, I was a classical historian and teacher at the Lycée Fontenelle in Rouen. I had studied very little African history during my training. It was national service in cooperation that led me to go to Africa. I was posted to Kisangani, in the heart of the Congo, just as the Mulélé revolt was beginning. I therefore rushed to the Quai d’Orsay [the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ed.] office managing the newly established National Service in Cooperation. After thinking long and hard, I said, “You know, I’m not too keen on the climate in the Congo Basin”. The official laughed. He replied, “Yes, yes, I understand, it’s the political climate. But don’t worry; we’re not sending you there. We’re sending you to Rwanda and Burundi”. I knew those two countries, but that was about it. He showed me a map and some pictures. Then I thought to myself, “Well, let’s go travelling!”
Note from African Facts Editor: The Simba secessionist rebellion broke out in the north and east of the country in 1963, initially inspired by the ideas of the assassinated socialist leader Patrice Lumumba and led by Pierre Mulele. The rebellion reached its peak in 1964, before being definitively defeated in 1965 by Kinshasa, with the support of the Belgians and Americans.
I had already taught in a secondary school for two years. When I arrived, I found the atmosphere was different. However, I decided to approach my profession in the same effective and respectful way towards the students as I had in France. I was a lecturer at a teacher training college in Ngagara, on the outskirts of Bujumbura. It was for National Service, so it wasn’t supposed to last long — only a year. I wanted to leave after that. Not because of the climate or local life, but because despite the country having been independent since 1964, the Belgians were still very influential in education. Their paternalistic and bureaucratic teaching methods were very annoying.
— And when did the click occur? What was the initial trigger?
– I was convinced to stay for another year, because UNESCO [United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Ed.] created an École Normale Supérieure (ENS, an Institute of Advanced Education) to train the first generations of secondary teachers. In this case, the history and geography teachers. I was told: “There, you will do your programs”. I replied okay. And finally, I stayed there for four years. Obviously, those students I had in front of me… I had to teach them about their own country. However, there wasn’t much information available about Burundi and Rwanda. Most of it came from missionaries writing…
Regarding Burundi, there was a travelogue by a German explorer named Hans Meyer. As I was fluent in German, I translated his book. I also came across a passage from the account of an Austrian explorer named Oscar Baumann that caught my attention. He travelled through Burundi in 1892, and many things happened along the way, but I’ll spare you the details. In the north-west of the country, he was welcomed like a king. I asked my students if anyone knew this region so that I could gain a better understanding of what had happened to the explorer. One of them raised his hand. It was Émile Mworoha, the future historian of Burundi. He said, “Yes, my family lives there”. So we went there.
We met some elderly people. It was either 1965 or 1966. I was completely fascinated, even stunned. Some of them were children at the time and had been eyewitnesses to the passage of this expedition. And they were able to tell me that the Austrian traveller in question had passed through here, here, here, here and here, on such and such a hill and so on. This traveller had published a map of his expedition in Petermann Mittheilungen, a very well-known German geographical journal at the time. I found this map. These elderly people had not seen it, of course. However, their accounts coincided with the map. As I questioned more people in the area, I became increasingly impressed by the quality of their factual memory. One thing led to another and I began to conduct research based on oral history.
Note from African Facts Editor: Émile Mworoha (1940–2025), who passed away last July, was a Burundian historian and a leading figure in the Union for National Progress (UPRONA), the ruling party until 2003.
How did research on the region develop at the time you arrived?
In Burundi, there was initially nothing but an article by Jan Vansina [1929–2017, a Belgian historian and ethnographer Ed.]. This article focused mainly on the chronology of the royal dynasty, the Hans Meyer’s testimony. .. Really not much. In Rwanda, there were several books by missionaries. Well…
All my colleagues were serious people committed to their teaching work. The only people doing research on Burundi at the time were me and the Burundian students at the ENS. There were no other researchers for quite some time. Then others arrived, such as Christine Deslauriers etc.
In Rwanda, there was a real far-right school at Astrida with Bernard Lugan [French historian and far-right activist, marginalised, contested for his racialising approach, apologist for colonisation and the apartheid regime in South Africa Ed.], who also received support from truly racist geographers who compared “ethnic groups” to colonies of ants of different colours.
What sources do historians use when researching the region’s long history? There are written sources, such as colonial and missionary records. Are other sources based solely on oral tradition?
Yes, it is an oral culture. There were no written records at the time, nor any books or radios. During evening gatherings, people would tell stories. Of course, these stories were sometimes surprisingly vivid.
For example, when I began my research on the arrival of the Germans in Burundi, almost everyone told me that it began with the story of a dog that King Mwezi [ruler of Burundi from 1852 to 1908 Ed.] had lent to his son-in-law. The son-in-law did not return the dog, and they argued about it. The son-in-law then went to fetch the Germans from Lake Tanganyika, where they had been settled since 1897. That is why the Germans arrived (laughs). This was a way of sidestepping the question of conquest.
In fact, I think that for a very long time, the Burundians did not perceive colonial domination. It was only when Gitega was built and forced labour was introduced throughout the country, then the Belgian period, that they realised colonisation meant obligations in the form of forced labour, taxes, and so on.
To be continued.
