Democratic Republic of the Congo

F

Defense

In 2004 military forces consisted of a total of 64,800 personnel, dominated by an army of 60,000. There is also an air force of 3,000 members, and a navy of 1,800 members. Paramilitary forces and a civil guard totaled more than 31,000 members. Military service is voluntary. Defense expenditures in 1997 accounted for 41 percent of the national budget. Because the military was the main source of support for Mobutu, the Kabila regime reorganized the armed forces, placing its own supporters in command.

G

International Organizations

The DRC is a member of the United Nations, the African Union, and the African Development Bank.

VII

History

The early history of what is now the DRC is still largely unknown. The earliest inhabitants of the Congo Basin are believed to have been pygmies. Bantu groups moved into the area from the north and spread east and south beginning about 2,000 years ago. The northern Bantu groups settled in stateless communities in the rain forest. The Nilo-Saharan-speaking groups of the far north formed hierarchical systems with complex judicial structures. In the southern savanna zone, the Luba, Lunda, and other Bantu groups set up centralized kingdoms by 1500.

A

Kongo Kingdom

The most important early Congolese state was the kingdom of the Kongo people around the mouth of the Congo River. The Portuguese had some contact with the Kongo around 1482, when navigator Diogo Cam visited the mouth of the Congo River and claimed the surrounding region as Portuguese territory. The Portuguese named the river Rio de Padrão (Pillar River). At its height, the Kongo kingdom extended from present-day northwestern Angola to Gabon. In 1489 a Congolese embassy was sent to the Portuguese king, and in 1491 Franciscan missionaries and Portuguese craftsmen visited the area. Soon thereafter, the manikongo, or king, of Kongo converted to Christianity, but his attempts to impose the religion on his people provoked violent opposition. His son Afonso succeeded him in 1507. Literate in Portuguese, Afonso modeled his government on the Portuguese system and built many churches. Under Afonso, Kongo participated in slave raids in neighboring regions and in slave trade with the Portuguese, making Kongo a significant supplier to the Atlantic slave trade. The slave raiding brought unrest to the region, however, and the Kongo kingdom declined by the end of the 16th century, in part because of invasions by the Jaga, an eastern warrior people. Centuries elapsed before another serious European expedition to the region was undertaken. However, Arabs from the sultanate of Zanzibar in East Africa reached the region west of Lake Tanganyika in the mid-18th century, establishing plantations and conducting extensive slave raids. By the late 18th century 50,000 to 70,000 slaves were taken every year to Zanzibar and the Middle East.

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B

European Control

Foreign encroachment on the area increased during the 19th century. In 1816 British explorers attempted to follow the Congo River inland, reaching a point between present-day Matadi and Kinshasa, before illness forced them to retreat. Scottish explorer and missionary David Livingstone, who brought the injustices of the Zanzibari slave trade to the attention of Europe, reached Lualaba River from the east in 1871. Growing European interest in Africa as a source of wealth was stimulated by the accounts of explorers, notably Anglo-American journalist Henry Morton Stanley, who explored the Congo between 1874 and 1877. The first explorer to fully investigate the river, Stanley descended the Congo River system from the upper Lualaba to its mouth, traveling more than 2,600 km (more than 1,600 mi).

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