BurundiArticle Free Pass
An introduction to the country’s geography can be found in Françoise Cazenave-Piarrot, Alain Cazenave-Piarrot, and Albert Lopez, Géographie du Burundi: le pays et les hommes (1979); and Atlas du Burundi (1979). Useful sources on language, literature, and arts include Ethel M. Albert, “‘Rhetoric,’ ‘Logic,’ and ‘Poetics’ in Burundi: Culture Patterning of Speech Behavior,” American Anthropologist, special issue, pp. 35–54 (winter 1964–65); Alexandre Kimenyi, Kinyarwanda and Kirundi Names: A Semiolinguistic Analysis of Bantu Onomastics (1989); F.M. Rodegem, Précis de grammaire rundi (1967) and Sagesse kirundi (1961); R.P. Bagein, Grammaire kirundi à l’usage des commençants (1951); and the classic Jan Vansina, De la tradition orale: essai de méthode historique (1961).
The classic source for precolonial ethnography and history is Hans Mayer, Die Barundi (1916), also available in a French edition excellently annotated by Jean-Pierre Chrétien, Les Barundi (1984). Also useful for this period of history is Emile Mworoha (ed.), Histoire du Burundi: des origines à la fin du XIXe siècle (1987). For colonial history, some useful sources are Michel Lechat, Le Burundi politique; and Joseph Gahama, Le Burundi sous administration Belge (1983), which also includes an English-language summary. Postindependence developments and politics are dealt with at length in René Lemarchand, Rwanda and Burundi (1970); René Lemarchand and David Martin, Selective Genocide in Burundi (1974); René Lemarchand, Burundi: Ethnocide as Discourse and Practice (1994, also published as Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide, 1996); and Marc Manirakiza, La Fin de la monarchie burundaise (1990); and a shorter pamphlet and article are provided by Reginald Kay, Burundi Since the Genocide (1987); and Allison Boyer, “Unity at Last?,” Africa Report, 37:37–40 (March/April 1992). Ellen K. Eggers, Historical Dictionary of Burundi, 2nd ed. (1997), includes an extensive bibliography and a chronology of Burundi’s history.
Do you know anything more about this topic that you’d like to share?