Topic > Colonialism and postcolonial ethnic conflict in the East…

From the late 19th century until achieving independence in the early 1960s, East African countries were under the colonial administration of European empires. After decades of foreign rule that saw unprecedented transformations within society, the postcolonial states that emerged were marred by ethnic conflict. It has been argued that the beliefs of British, Belgian and German administrators led them to completely reorganize the societies they governed on the basis of a fictitious "tribal" model, and in the process invented ethnicity. There is much debate on this topic, however, and its continued relevance to contemporary politics only makes it more vigorous. Before we proceed to analyze the extent to which it might have been invented under colonial rule, we must first establish exactly what is meant by the term “ethnicity”. It's a complicated and controversial issue, interpreted in a variety of different ways that can depend on political beliefs, social status, place of birth and personal history. Clearly, if we want to talk about "ethnicity" without descending into an exhausting debate on linguistics and semantics, it is necessary to take a certain degree of generalization for granted. We can say that all human beings, in general, objectively belong to some form of "ethnicity"; that is, a social group whose members are linked through a shared culture, religion, territory, language or genealogy. What varies greatly is the awareness of this connection and the importance an individual places on it. The term "tribe" would further complicate the debate and serve no purpose other than to divert discussion from the process of invention; the main focus of...... middle of paper ...... and every aspect of life, from marriage to choice of profession, was influenced by the ethnic group you belonged to. However, transience, multiplicity and change were the key words. It can be said that what colonial governments really invented, and what often left such a painfully devastating legacy, was not ethnicity per se, but the codification of ethnic groups in national laws, the exclusivity of groupings and the foregrounding of a person's "tribe" at the expense of all other means of identification. You no longer simply took comfort from being part of a Tutsi community, you were a Tutsi from the day you were born until the day you died, and the course of your life would be decided for you based on this label. Rather than inventing it, colonialism destroyed the defining characteristic of ethnicity in the East African context: its ability to transform.