History of Kinshasa
While the modern city of Kinshasa has its roots in the 1881 establishment of Léopoldville by Belgian settlers, human settlement in the Kinshasa area has stretched back to at least the 1st millennium BC. In the Pool Malebo area, the Tio (or Bateke) populated the right side (north) of the river and others assimilated with the Téké culture (Humbu and Mfinu peoples) resided on the left side (south) of the river. The region was an area where the slave trade and ivory trade played a significant role in the economy, and enriched the Tio Kingdom.
16th-17th centuries
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From the 16th to 17th century, the Pool region became an important hub between the river and coastal areas. Vegetables of the Americas were also introduced to the interior of the continent through trade; slaves (most often the losers in various conflicts) were travelling to Loango, the mouth of the river and south of the Kongo Kingdom. The Bobangis, sometimes called Bangala (people of the river), occupied the major part of trade with the equatorial region in navigating the river and its river to the villages Téké Pool.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of mostly fishermen and traders from the north Teke install markets and villages in the southern Pool Malebo and on the board that will appoint the latest Batéké plateau. The tribes of the region, Humbu and Mfinu, were regarded as owners on this side of the river. Over time, the settlers Téké cause local farther shore, to the interior of the hills. The main Téké villages of the south shore were Nsasa with around 5000 inhabitants, Ntambo with less than 3000 inhabitants. Lemba, among a multitude of small villages humbu, was the capital market and political Humbu, with about 300 residents. The markets saw River caravans slave holders of oil, almonds, palm, peanuts, sesame and ivory come and go.
Colonial Léopoldville
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The city was founded as a trading post by Henry Morton Stanley in 1881 and named Léopoldville in honor of King Léopold II of Belgium, who controlled the vast territory that is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as a colony. Stanley delegated governship of the city to Anthony Swinburne.[1] The post flourished as the first navigable port on the Congo River above Livingstone Falls, a series of rapids over 300 km below Leopoldville. At first, all goods arriving by sea or being sent by sea had to be carried by porters between Léopoldville and Matadi, the port below the rapids and 150 km from the coast. The completion of the Matadi-Kinshasa portage railway in 1898 provided a faster and more efficient alternative route around the rapids and sparked the rapid development of Léopoldville.
Local indigenous groups died off in large numbers and the city saw immigration from other parts of Congo. Many immigrants came to join Belgium's Force Publique. Lingala emerged as a common language in this multicultural city. As time went on, textiles and brewing developed as local industries. However, Kinshasa did not profit greatly from the copper extraction occurring in Katanga Province (later called Shaba Province), the output from which was diverted first through British territories and then through Angola.[1]
Some researchers have identified Léopoldville as an origin point of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. A University of Oxford team in 2014 reported a high likelihood that the ancestor of HIV-1, Group M emerged Léopoldville between 1909 and 1930.[2]
The city began to undergo major expansion around the year 1910, with the creation of a geometric city plan and the construction of new buildings including the Banque du Congo Belge and the Hotel A.B.C. (owned by the Compagnie Commerciale et Agricole d'Alimentation du Bas-Congo.) Schools were constructed and a Chamber of Commerce formed. 1920 saw the beginning of regular airplane service to Elizabethville.[3]
The African population was 20,000 in 1920 and 27,000 in 1924; the European population rose from 245 in 1908 to 2521 in 1914 to 2521 in 1918. 1926, the city was elevated to capital of the Belgian Congo, replacing the town of Boma in the Congo estuary. By 1929 the city population was 48,088 including 2,766 Europeans and after a decline at the beginning of the 1930s began to rise again at the same rate. On the eve of independence in 1959 the city population was 300,000 including 25,000 Europeans.[1][3]
The original layout of the city was segregated between African and European, with a “no man’s land” in between. As the city grew this in-between area became the commercial district. The city was formally redesigned in the 1930s with stricter rules for segregation and a bigger central area. A new central market for both races, as well as a golf club, a park, and a botanical garden for whites, were developed as part of the new cordon sanitaire dividing (not altogether effectively) the neighborhoods by race. Additional segregated master plans, proposed in Brussels and locally in the 1950s, were never implemented.[4]
Independence and Mobutu era
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When the Belgian Congo became independent of Belgium in 1960, Dutch was dropped as an official language and so was the alternative name Leopoldstad. The city grew rapidly (11.6% annually from 1960–1967; 6.43% annually from 1967–1973),[5] drawing people from across the country who came in search of their fortunes or to escape ethnic strife elsewhere. This inevitably brought about a change to the city's ethnic and linguistic composition as well; Lingala remained the lingua franca.[6] 367,550 people immigrated to Kinshasa in 1950–1967.[7] Urbanized land area grew from 2,331 hectares in 1950 to 5,512 hectares in 1957 to 12,863 hectares in 1968 to 17,922 hectares in 1975.[8]
In 1965 Mobutu Sese Seko seized power in the Congo in his second coup and initiated a policy of "Africanizing" the names of people and places in the country. In 1966, Léopoldville was renamed Kinshasa for a village named Kinchassa that once stood near the site. The city developed as the bureaucratic and cultural capital of the country, and developed an indigenous intellectual elite.[9]
In 1974, Kinshasa hosted the 'Rumble in the Jungle' boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, in which Ali defeated Foreman to regain the World Heavyweight title.
Kinshasa suffered greatly from the late 1970s through 1990s due to Mobutu's excesses, mass corruption, nepotism and the civil war that led to his downfall. Foreign businesses left, and roads, infrastructure, and transport links with other cities deteriorated. However, population continued to increase, due to endogenous growth and to migration from the countryside—driven by the cultural appeal of music, film, and football as well as by war and necessity.[9][1]
Kinshasa post-Mobutu
On May 20, 1997, after the First Congo War, Laurent-Désiré Kabila triumphantly marched with his rebel forces to take control of the country's capital after Mobutu fled into exile in France. However, the city was later nearly taken over by other rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda during the earlier part of the Second Congo War. It was very recently the scene of fighting between loyalists of Jean-Pierre Bemba and Joseph Kabila following the 2006 general elections; 600 people, including untold numbers of civilian bystanders were killed or wounded. Joseph Kabila, raised in Tanzania, and a poor speaker of French and Lingala, has not endeared himself to the locals.[1]
The announcement in 2016 that a new election would be delayed two years led to large protests in September and in December which involved barricades in the streets and left dozens of people dead. Schools and businesses were closed down.[10][11]
The population of Kinshasa has increased steadily, due to endogenous growth and to migration from the countryside. Migrants come to the city fleeing violence, attracted by the promise of jobs, and lured by its cultural image.[1]
See also
- Timeline of Kinshasa
- Urban history of Kinshasa (in French)
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Joe Trapido, "Kinshasa's Theater of Power", New Left Review 98, March/April 2016.
- ↑ "HIV pandemic's origins located". University of Oxford. 3 October 2014. Retrieved 9 July 2016.
- 1 2 Pain (1984), p. 15–20.
- 1 2 Luce Beeckmans & Liora Bigon, “The making of the central markets of Dakar and Kinshasa: from colonial origins to the post-colonial period”; Urban History 43(3), 2016; doi:10.1017/S0963926815000188.
- ↑ Pain (1984), p. 21.
- ↑ Mukenge, Tshilemalema ; Culture and customs of the Congo, Culture and customs of Africa; Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002; ISBN 0-313-31485-3, ISBN 978-0-313-31485-8; pg. 72-75
- ↑ Pain (1984), p. 22.
- ↑ Pain (1984), pp. 30– 31.
- 1 2 Bill Freund, “City and Nation in an African Context: National Identity in Kinshasa”; Journal of Urban History 38(5), 2012; doi:10.1177/0096144212449141.
- ↑ "DR Congo election: 17 dead in anti-Kabila protests", BBC, 19 September 2016.
- ↑ Merritt Kennedy, "Congo A 'Powder Keg' As Security Forces Crack Down On Whistling Demonstrators", NPR, 21 December 2016.
Bibliography
- Pain, Marc (1984). Kinshasa: la ville et la cité. Paris: Orstom, Institut Français de Recherche Scientifique pour le Développement en Coopération.