Review: Atlas of Rwanda

Summary

This collection of critical reviews evaluates four recent works on African political history and geography, highlighting their contributions and methodological shortcomings. The opening critique examines a study of Chad’s civil war by Richard Adloff and a co-author. While the chronology of events is sound, the reviewers fault it for a profoundly erroneous conclusion—that Hissène Habré could never return to power after 1980—attributing this failure to the authors’ lack of empirical, on-the-ground knowledge of Chadian politics. By contrast, Bernard Lanne’s *Tchad-Libye. La querelle des frontières* is praised as a foundational, exhaustively sourced work that definitively establishes the Chad–Libya border based on international treaties and archival research, including testimonies from the 1935 Mussolini–Laval era. The *Atlas du Rwanda*, produced by the National University of Rwanda, is lauded for its rich integration of historical cartography with physical, human, and economic geography; special maps trace the kingdom’s formation, precolonial trade, German and Belgian colonization, and the growth of Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim missions. Finally, Dominique Darbon and Philippe L’Hoiry’s comparative study of political power and integration in Burundi and Malawi is severely criticized. The Burundi section relies on outdated ethnic and clan models, ignores key recent scholarship, and suffers from conceptual confusion, while the Malawi analysis, though clearer, offers little novelty. Overall, the reviews underscore the necessity of rigorous historical methodology and direct engagement with primary sources in African studies.