The Rwandan Revolution, also known as the Hutu Revolution, Social Revolution, or Wind of Destruction, was a period of ethnic violence in Rwanda from 1959 to 1961 between the Hutu and the Tutsi, two of the three ethnic groups in Rwanda. The revolution saw the country transition from a Tutsi monarchy under Belgian colonial authority to an independent Hutu-dominated republic.
1969 stamp celebrating the Rwandan Revolution, depicting a peasant raising the red-yellow-green Rwandan flag.
Reconstruction of the King of Rwanda's palace at Nyanza
A 1916 postage stamp from the Belgian Occupied East African Territories, captured during the East African Campaign in World War I
A royalist pin badge with the slogan "Vive Kigeli V" ("Long live Kigeli V") dating to the period of the Rwandan Revolution
Rwanda, officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is highly elevated, giving it the soubriquet "land of a thousand hills", with its geography dominated by mountains in the west and savanna to the southeast, with numerous lakes throughout the country. The climate is temperate to subtropical, with two rainy seasons and two dry seasons each year. It is the most densely populated mainland African country; among countries larger than 10,000 km2, it is the fifth most densely populated country in the world. Its capital and largest city is Kigali.
A reconstruction of the ancient King's Palace at Nyanza
Juvénal Habyarimana, president from 1973 to 1994
Human skulls at the Nyamata Genocide Memorial
Rwandan President Paul Kagame