Ruled by a king, the Kingdom of Burundi was an ancient state in the Great Lakes region of East Africa. The kingdom was located in what today corresponds to the country of Burundi. The dominant sociological component of this kingdom was the Hutus, but the ruling dynasty was Tutsi, with a king nicknamed Mwami.
Birth of the Kingdom
Historians do not accurately trace the birth of the Kingdom of Burundi. But the approximations state that the kingdom was born in the 17th century. Its birth starts with the annexation of the established Hutus by the Tutsis, a minority. The latter promote the territory into a kingdom and hoist Ntare 1st as first king (Mwami). Who will govern from 1675 to 1705. Ntare Ruhatsi, his real name, was a conqueror from the southern regions, a dissident of the Buha in the vicinity of the Malagarazi river.
Heyday of the kingdom
Under the leadership of Ntare, the kingdom began to expand and annexed many neighboring territories to become a vast empire. Beyond these conquests, the kingdom acquired much of its wealth from eastern trade. This trade is made of agro-pastoral products and of other basic necessities and even luxury products. From that time also, the regional salt trade was organized from the Kibero saltworks for the Bunyoro and Buganda regions and for the Uvinza saltworks for the Buha and Burundi regions. Luxury products, such as pearls and cowrie shells, come from the Swahili coast, copper bracelets from southern regions such as Katanga.
But the kingdom and all of the Great Lakes territories want to open up to world trade. This is how they pivot their commercial process to the sale of slaves, ivory and firearms. In general, slaves and ivory are exchanged for guns, copper rings and pearls.
Decline of the kingdom
Like most of the old great African kingdoms, it was the arrival of Europeans that created the fall. The Berlin Conference of 1885, which decided on the partition of Africa between the European powers, can be considered as the last act which definitively tilted Africa into the world order. As for the kingdom of Burundi, in 1890, it became a territory of German East Africa. After the First World War, the Belgians annexed the region and the kingdom disappeared definitively to make way for the country of Burundi. Which will obtain its independence in 1962.
