To what extent did the legacies of European colonisation contribute to the Rwandan genocide of 1994?

The Rwandan genocide had traditionally been perceived by some historians such as Edward Herman and David Peterson as the result of a chaotic civil war, this view is further empathised by the United Nation’s (U.N) reluctance in deeming the genocide as such, prohibiting The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crime and Genocide Act to be enacted, consequently reducing the extent of urgency to the mass killing and systematic marginalisation of ethnic groups in Rwanda, thus also reducing the effectiveness of the aforementioned Act. The omission of an official declaration of genocide from the U.N has allowed some to simplify the causation of the genocide as being based wholly on the presumed ‘ethnic hatred’ of the two tribal groups of ‘Tutsi’ and ‘Hutu’. The matter remains conflicting, historians gave argued that the discontent between both groups pre-existed prior to colonization, as a result of the hierarchal social structure of Rwanda, which had the ‘Hutu’ beneath the ‘Tutsis’ since the early modern period. A nebulous judgement of Rwanda’s monarchy identifies it as favouring ‘Tutsis’ above ‘Hutus’, rather than the genocide occurring as a result of the consequences of the policies implemented throughout colonization . Some have argued that it was Rwanda’s own oppressive monarchy that had laid the foundation for the pre-eminence of the genocide. However, places too little empathises on the large force of colonization, negating the coercive methods used to indoctrinate each groups by way of ‘divide and conquer’ but also using favouritism to curry support from ruling fractions of Rwandan society. Linda Melvern argues, this view overemphasises how fragmented Rwanda’s societal structure was pre colonisation and fails to acknowledge the crucial involvement of the West from the 1890s to 1990s as during this time, Rwanda’s policies were influenced by the colonisers, leading to tension developing due to the growth of a more discriminative society.