10 favored the Tutsi and effectively excluded the Hutu from all positions of power within both the colonial and the monarchical administrations, thus significantly sharpening the polarization of Hutu and Tutsi identities. Starting in 1926, the Belgians implemented a series of reforms under which Hutus were systematically removed from all positions of political power and the control of the existing Tutsi monarchy further centralized and concentrated. Furthermore, Hutus were indirectly excluded from access to political power by the denial of access to education, the gateway to political power under the Belgian colonial administration. These policies of ethnic differentiation were fully and finally codified with the 1933 Belgian introduction of mandatory identity cards. By including ethnic categories, these cards decisively rigidified the once flexible categories of ethnicity in Rwanda and also provided a practical means for the implementation of discriminatory policies and practices. In addition to thus constructing ethnicity as the basis both of political organization and political exclusion, the colonial era was also characterized by increasing economic exploitation along ethnic axes. This was closely linked to the process of political privilege described above, for the increased political power invested in Tutsi chiefs by the European colonial administrations, in combination with the destruction of earlier mechanisms of political accountability wrought by these administrations, effectively allowed the Tutsi chiefs to exploit their newly-enhanced power for their own economic gain 37 The result of this colonial reconfiguration of ethnicity was that on the eve of the 1959 revolution that led to Rwanda's independence, forty-three chiefs out of forty-five were Tutsi as were 549 sub-chiefs out of 559, and political power in Rwanda continued to remain largely confined within a "closed oligarchy of a few noble lineages"drawn from the ruling Tutsi class. The fundamental outcome of this system of ethnic privilege institutionalized under colonialism however, was not only increasing political and economic inequality, political oppression, and economic exploitation. More precisely, it was inequality, oppression and exploitation that carried 5> Des Forges, 35; Lemarchand, African Kingships in Perspective, 77-8; Prunier, 25 56 Linden, 152; Des Forges, 35 37 C. Newbury, The Cohesion of Oppression,117-121,131-40,151-2 38 Prunier. 27 C. Newbury, The Cohesion ofOppression, 310 favored the Tutsi and effectively excluded the Hutu from all positions of power within both the colonial and the monarchical administrations, thus significantly sharpening the polarization of Hutu and Tutsi identities. Starting in 1926, the Belgians implemented a series of reforms under which Hutus were systematically removed from all positions of political power35 and the control of the existing Tutsi monarchy further centralized and concentrated. Furthermore, Hutus were indirectly excluded from access to political power by the denial of access to education, the gateway to political power under the Belgian colonial administration.36 These policies of ethnic differentiation were fully and finally codified with the 1933 Belgian introduction of mandatory identity cards. By including ethnic categories, these cards decisively rigidified the once flexible categories of ethnicity in Rwanda and also provided a practical means for the implementation of discriminatory policies and practices. In addition to thus constructing ethnicity as the basis both of political organization and political exclusion, the colonial era was also characterized by increasing economic exploitation along ethnic axes. This was closely linked to the process of political privilege described above, for the increased political power invested in Tutsi chiefs by the European colonial administrations, in combination with the destruction of earlier mechanisms of political accountability wrought by these administrations, effectively allowed the Tutsi chiefs to exploit their newly-enhanced power for their own economic gain.37 The result of this colonial reconfiguration of ethnicity was that on the eve of the 1959 revolution that led to Rwanda’s independence, “forty-three chiefs out of forty-five were Tutsi as were 549 sub-chiefs out of 559,”38 and political power in Rwanda continued to remain largely confined within a “closed oligarchy of a few noble lineages” drawn from the ruling Tutsi class.39 The fundamental outcome of this system of ethnic privilege institutionalized under colonialism, however, was not only increasing political and economic inequality, political oppression, and economic exploitation. More precisely, it was inequality, oppression and exploitation that carried 35 Des Forges, 35; Lemarchand, African Kingships in Perspective, 77-8; Prunier, 25. 36 Linden, 152; Des Forges, 35. 37 C. Newbury, The Cohesion of Oppression, 117-121, 131-40, 151-2. 38 Prunier, 27. 39 C. Newbury, The Cohesion of Oppression, 3