In this excellent monograph on the origins of Burundi's first capital (Gitega), French historian Jean-Pierre Chrétien explores the challenging circumstances surrounding the creation of the Burundi Residency under German rule (1912–16). The author's skills as a historian are on full display. His excellent command of archival materials, his fine grasp of Burundi's early history, and sensitivity to the connections between local issues and imperial priorities are central to the quality of his analysis. The book fills an important gap in the literature on the impact of Germany's East African colony on its borderland district; despite some thematic overlap, it adds significantly to William Roger Louis's all-too-succinct chapter on ‘The Burundi Residency’ in his classic work on Ruanda-Urundi (1884–1919), published in 1963.

Although the German presence in Burundi was formalized in 1896 by the founding of a military station in Usumbura – today's capital as Bujumbura – the miasmic conditions of this tse-tse-infected coastal strip made it thoroughly unsuitable as the site of the capital. Gitega, on the other hand, in the cooler climes of the central region, and strategically located in relation to the country's traditional authorities, seemed a more sensible choice. Few suspected the many practical and political problems awaiting the colonial authorities, however, not to mention the protests and criticisms from missionaries raised by recruitment of forced labor. Incompetence, administrative disagreements, competing priorities, and budgetary constraints help explain the rapid turnover of district officers in charge of laying the groundwork of the new capital (Fonck, von Grawert, Goring, von Steinkeller-Langenn). To further complicate matters, a searing indictment of German colonial policies and practices appeared in the pages of a missionary journal (Afrika-Bote) under the pen of a White Father (Joseph Gassldinger), which did not go unnoticed by the German Colonial Office. Among the charges made was the accusation that, because of the inhuman treatment inflicted to African workers, the Residency was failing in its civilizing mission. Echoes of Gassldinger's broadside went far beyond the Residency, but did little to stop the use of forced labor; the author estimates that, by 1912, when the new capital was inaugurated, on average each chief was expected to supply fifty laborers per month, which for some forty chiefs amounted to 2,000 ‘corvéeables’ employed monthly as road builders, brick layers, porters and so forth.

The most daunting challenge facing the would-be civilizers stemmed from the complicated relations between the mwamiship (kingship) of aging Mwezi Gissabo and the rival hierarchies of chiefs over which he tried to assert his fledgling authority. The void left by Gissabo's death in 1908 was filled by the young and inexperienced Mutaga, who soon found himself embroiled in factional wrangles over land involving competing princely networks, the most prominent being the so-called Bezi and Batare families. For all their efforts to make practical sense out this confusing landscape German administrators were, for all intents and purposes, navigating uncharted waters. Their hesitations, false starts, unwise policy choices, and internal discords are hardly surprising; what is astonishing is that in spite of all this they were able to set in motion a process of modernization which, despite the heavy social and financial costs, introduced Africans to the benefits of a Western education, improved sanitation, expanding commercial networks, and wider communications grid. Especially noteworthy in this regard is the remarkably detailed statistical information kept by colonial civil servants, ranging from the types of local crops and staples sold on local markets to the number and size of caravans passing through Gitega, including their gender composition and the kinds and quantity of commodities they carried. All of this and more comes out with a wealth of arresting detail in the chapter on ‘the contradictions of a managed modernization’. The conflicting cross-pressures arising from the attractiveness of modernity and the claims of tradition must be seen as the most potentially disruptive of such contradictions. But this did not prevent a coalescence of the two, as shown by the rise to colonial eminence of one of the most distinguished products of German-inspired modernization, the legendary chief Baranyanka, who served as a pivotal figure during the German phase of colonial rule, but also through much of the Belgian tutelle.

Some may quibble over the appropriateness of the ‘Far West’ metaphor in the book's subtitle and the occasional typo (the cordial welcome extended to the author in 1914 [sic] by the ambassadors of France and Germany strains credulity). But there is no denying the wealth of valuable insight and fresh data, not to mention the priceless collection of photographs and maps, offered in the pages of this masterful plunge into the history of this little-known ‘ville du Far West’.