Louis Papy · 1982
In his comparative review, Louis Papy discusses Atlas du Rwanda, directed by Christian Prioul and Pierre Sirven and produced by the French Ministry of Cooperation for the National University of Rwanda. He praises its colour plates, substantial explanatory notes and extensive bibliography. His account covers physical geography, history, population, health, agriculture and urban development. He commends the geomorphological mapping for its grounding in field knowledge and highlights Prioul’s climatic regionalization, which shows diversity that a simple scheme of altitudinal zones would obscure; evapotranspiration and mountain climates remain insufficiently understood. The soil and vegetation plates address agricultural potential, erosion risks and the effects of clearing. Papy gives particular attention to the atlas’s account of changing rural land use: cultivation expands into pasture, steep slopes and drained valley marshes, while traditional erosion-control practices face pressures from intensified cultivation, livestock and deforestation. He also values the health plates for relating disease distribution to physical environments and ways of life. Historical discussion includes Prioul’s adoption, in its essentials, of an interpretation in which incoming Tutsi pastoralists imposed their rule on Hutu cultivators; Papy notes that the Burundi atlas’s historians contest this account. The review also describes Sirven’s treatment of Kigali’s growth as the capital and Butare’s continuing educational and research functions. Papy’s overall assessment of the atlas’s cartographic execution and explanatory content is strongly favourable.
Gérard Brasseur · 1984
Gérard Brasseur reviews the 1981 Atlas du Rwanda, prepared by the National University of Rwanda, emphasizing the historical coverage within its 32 plates and accompanying commentaries. Four plates address the country’s past: Kagamé traces the kingdom’s formation from about 1312, its districts in 1896, and early European travel routes; three plates by B. Lugan cover precolonial trade, German administration and wartime retreat, Belgian colonization and developments leading to independence, and the Catholic Church from 1900 to 1976. Brasseur notes unclear eighteenth- and nineteenth-century dates, probably typographical errors, and questions the meaning of the “royaumes pluviateurs” shown among the districts. He also identifies historical material in maps of population density, Protestant and Muslim settlement, and urban growth, especially Kigali. Despite these reservations, he praises both the historical plates and the physical, human, and economic geography maps as remarkable.
