A 1990 invasion from Uganda started a war that ended with the 1994 genocide and reshaped central Africa

historyWikipedia1990–1994 · Rwanda

A 1990 invasion from Uganda started a war that ended with the 1994 genocide and reshaped central Africa

the gist

The Rwandan Civil War ran from October 1990 to July 1994 between the Rwandan Armed Forces and the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel army founded by Tutsi refugees who had fled to Uganda after the 1959 Rwandan Revolution. The conflict grew out of a long dispute between Hutu and Tutsi groups, after the revolution replaced a Tutsi monarchy with a Hutu-led republic. The RPF invaded from the north-east in 1990, was pushed back by the army with French help, and regrouped under Paul Kagame. After the Arusha Accords were signed in August 1993, extremist Hutu Power leaders planned the extermination of the Tutsi, and the killing began after President Habyarimana was assassinated on 6 April 1994. Over about a hundred days, between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed. The RPF resumed the war, seized Kigali on 4 July, and ended the fighting later that month.

so what

The war is the necessary background to the 1994 genocide, one of the deadliest episodes of the twentieth century, and to Rwanda's politics today. The RPF's victory brought Kagame to power, and as of 2026 he and the RPF remain the dominant force in the country. Its 1996 offensive into Zaire also triggered the First Congo War.

fun fact

Paul Kagame was in the United States when the 1990 invasion began and returned to take command of the RPF.

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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