Building a Nation: Gender, Labor, and the Politics of Nationalism in Colonial Rwanda Restricted; Files & ToC

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the ways that the Belgian colonial state forced Rwandan women into labor for the state and how women’s labor became a political flashpoint during decolonization. The exploitation of women to build roads and commercial coffee farms in the context of mass male migration would have profound implications for Rwanda’s history, igniting class, gender, and regional divides among Rwandans and shaping the development of nationalism. I argue that women were integral to the function of the colonial state and that women’s labor resulted in backlash from Rwandan men who sought to force women back into the domestic sphere after independence.

My dissertation begins its narrative with the evolution of labor under imperial control

in the early 1900s. Disputes over colonial power between Germany, Belgium, and Britain created

legal chaos and violence in the first decades of colonialism in Rwanda. I argue that first

German and then Belgian colonial administrators used early twentieth-century famines to legally

force men into labor for the state, primarily in agriculture and infrastructure construction. When

men subsequently left the territory to avoid those labor demands, forced labor fell to women.

While women were not legally responsible for forced labor, they faced brutal punishment if they

resisted. In the 1950s, women’s forced labor became a politically charged issue. Belgium

eventually reformed the labor system due to international pressure, but gendered forced labor had

already become a central complaint of non-elite Rwandan men. In 1962, when Rwandan men

gained control of the country, they forced women back into domestic spheres and revoked their

right to vote. Using multi-sited archival research, I reimagine women's role in empire by illustrating how decolonization movements failed to provide legal gender parity.

Table of Contents

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About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	History
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	History, African History, World History
Mot-clé	Labor Rwanda Nationalism Gender
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Clifton Crais, Emory University
Committee Members	Mariana Candido, Emory University Tehila Sasson, Emory University Jennie Burnet , Georgia State University

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