In this carefully researched historical work J. J. Carney augments the growing, cross-disciplinary scholarship on the causes of Rwandan genocide. During the twenty years since extremist Hutus attempted to exterminate Tutsis and moderate Hutus a number of works have examined ethnic politics, international relations and economic failings. The close relations between State and Catholic Church, the Church's protection of its institutional interests and its role in the hardening of ethnic categories are frequently mentioned. Carney considers such narratives to be insufficiently historically detailed and, as the subtitle indicates, he argues for greater attention to be paid to the late colonial era, in order to better understand the processes at work. Over half the book is a meticulous study of the Church between 1950 and 1962, a period which culminated in political independence and the massacre of Tutsis the following year. One chapter examines the period from 1900 to 1950 and a single chapter covers significant elements between 1963 and 1994. Carney's careful analysis of under-used archival sources provides insight into the institutional workings and shifting ideologies of the White Fathers and the diocese of Kabgayi. To aid comprehension of the main events and terms he provides as appendices a helpful timeline and glossary. He outlines complex and changing conceptions of identity, bringing to interpretations of ethnicity the ways in which Catholic social teaching was applied to the fraught categorisations of ‘Tutsi’ and ‘Hutu’. He charts alliances and negotiations between church leaders, Catholic media and political leaders, and also internal relations between prominent European and African priests and the ethnic tensions which arose at Nyakibanda seminary. He also highlights the way in which political and social theologies applied in Rwanda. Thus, the history deals largely with elites, their organisations, their ideas and the impact of their application. It does not explain steady Catholic conversion over the twentieth century or the responses of the Catholic population to the institution and its ideologies. It does demonstrate the complexity of the Catholic Church, the tensions within it between Tutsi priests and White Fathers and the perceived threat to the Church of Tutsi-supported nationalist rhetoric, which created ideologies and patterns of violence pre-1963 that culminated in genocide in 1994. Carney has produced an institutional history of the Catholic Church which will influence wider scholarship on Rwanda.

The epilogue takes a disciplinary shift to theological reflection as Carney sketches some ‘lessons’ from Rwanda by applying his observations and analysis to contemporary Catholicism. Whilst this approach may be uncommon in contemporary ecclesiastical historiography it demonstrates Carney's Catholic engagement and it furthers his critique that Catholic social teaching and its interpretation influenced ethnic discourse in Rwanda and is responsible for failings which produced a situation in which genocide was possible. He promises a theological work to scrutinise social teaching on its own terms, which one anticipates will be as thorough as his history.