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Central African Republic
Located in the middle of the continent, the Central African Republic (CAR) has the potential to be one of Africa’s richest countries; during the colonial era, it was known as the “Cinderella of the French Empire.” The soil is highly fertile, and the country possesses vast mineral wealth, valuable forests, and an abundance of wildlife for tourism. Although it has a diverse population, the CAR has experienced little ethnic or religious strife. Yet a tragic history has kept the country from fulfilling its potential. The slave trade and French colonialism devastated its population. Since independence, it has suffered a series of repressive and sometimes brutal regimes, and has remained economically and militarily dependent on France. And in recent years, despite efforts toward democratic reform, a number of attempted coups and rebellions have shaken the country. This ongoing violence and unrest make it unlikely that the CAR will soon realize the promise of its natural riches.
Geography and Early History
A high plateau divides present-day CAR from east to west. The Ubangi River feeds the Congo River, the Chari River runs into the Chad Basin, and other minor tributaries feed the Nile River. In the dry north, mountains reach 1,400 m (4,593 ft), while the southern forests experience a perpetual rainy season. The myriad of waterways that crisscross the region created fertile land along fluvial basins.Archaeological evidence (in the form of polished flint and quartz tools) shows that the migratory Aka Pygmy people, known also as Babinga or Tvides, have fished, hunted, and gathered foodstuffs in the area of the modern-day CAR for at least 8,000 years. Around 2,500 years ago, agricultural peoples settled in the region and cleared the thick brush of the present-day savanna belt to grow millet and sorghum. Arrangements of hundreds of megaliths, many of them several tons in weight, suggest the development of a sophisticated agricultural society.Linguistic evidence indicates that by the first millennium, speakers of Nilo-Saharan languages had entered the region from the east. At around the same time, speakers of Niger-Congo languages entered the region from the west and opened the forested southern areas to agriculture; gradually, they spread into the central and southeastern savanna areas. One or both of these groups introduced the technology of iron production to the region. Most of the savanna people lived in extended family compounds, with political and social order determined by kinship. As agriculturists, they were dependent upon favorable weather, and droughts created scarcity.The first evidence of kingdoms in the area dates to the sixteenth century. By this time, three Islamic kingdoms—Darfur, Wadai, and Bagirmi—had emerged to the north, and eventually extended their rule southward. These kingdoms, particularly Wadai and Bagirmi, carried out raids to capture slaves for the trans-Saharan trade, and people of the northern savanna fled south into the forests. Meanwhile, in the eastern part of the present-day CAR, an aristocratic caste with origins to the northeast had established kingdoms among the Azande people. Newly introduced crops, particularly maize (corn) and cassava, produced agricultural surpluses that supported these states and aristocracies.Slave Trade in Central Africa
From the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century, the trans-Saharan and transatlantic slave trades shaped the history of Central Africa. Indeed, there is evidence that slave raiders working in the eastern part of the region also participated in the Indian Ocean Slave Trade. In the mid-seventeenth century, the trans-Saharan slave trade expanded dramatically, with a few thousand or more enslaved people taken annually from the north of the region. At the same time, traders began to send additional slaves to the Atlantic coast and on to the New World. The number of Central Africans involved in the transatlantic slave trade remained relatively small until the late eighteenth century, by which time other areas had become depopulated and demand for slaves had increased. Riverine communities, collectively called the Bobangi or Ubangians, formed extensive commercial networks, trading slaves and ivory for manufactured European goods with the Téké people on the lower Congo River. Canoes capable of holding at least fifty people plied the rivers, capturing unsuspecting individuals and taking undesirable persons from villages. These slave raiders progressed southward, returning with cloth, jewelry, and guns. As the demand for slaves increased, animosity and violence grew between interior peoples and the raiding riverine traders.As the transatlantic slave trade declined in the early 1800s, the trans-Saharan and internal African slave trades flourished in the north. Each of the northern kingdoms, including Wadai, Darfur, Bagirmi, and Kanem-Bornu, informally had its own raiding preserve in the region and conducted several raids during the dry season. Fulani slavers from Adamawa in present-day Cameroon conducted raids in the west. As with the transatlantic trade, it is not possible to determine the number of people taken from the area, but the social impact was clearly extensive. Historical enmities, decentralized social structures, and periodic migrations to evade raiding parties made it difficult for the peoples of the region to unify in opposition to the slave traders. Meanwhile, traders depopulated the area, particularly the central and eastern regions. They also brought goods such as salt, sugar, cloth, and tea, created trading posts, and promoted an indigenous merchant class; they took ivory and destroyed the large elephant herds that once roamed the savanna. In addition, northerners, particularly the Fulani from Adamawa and the Sokoto Caliphate, introduced Islam during slave raids and jihads (holy wars) against the Gbaya and Mbun in the northwest.The slave trade has marked the history of each of the eight major ethnic groups of the present-day CAR. The Banda, Gbaya, Mandija, Mbun, and Sara all fell victim to slave raiders. The Mandija and Sara may in fact have entered the region fleeing slave raiders to the north and west. Azande chiefdoms formed alliances with different slave-raiding kingdoms, while the Hausa and Fulani first entered the region during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to obtain slaves for agricultural estates in Adamawa and Sokoto.In the second half of the nineteenth century, the scale of the trans-Saharan slave trade expanded. In 1879 Rabih al-Zubayr, a military commander and slave trader from the Sudan, settled in the northeast of the present-day CAR. Over the next decade and a half he created an empire by raiding the area for slaves. This empire absorbed the kingdoms of Darfur, Bagirmi, and Kanem-Bornu, as well as most of the Azande chiefdoms, and exported slaves to North Africa and the Middle East. In 1894 Rabih moved his headquarters to the northwest, and left Sultan al-Sanusi in charge of much of his territory in the present-day CAR. Al-Sanusi’s domain, based at Ndélé, grew steadily until 1900, when French forces defeated Rabih and moved to incorporate the entire region into their colonial empire.In 1880, as Rabih and al-Sanusi reigned in the east and north, many Gbaya and Mbun united to resist Fulani dominance in the northwest. A decade later they brought an end to Fulani control over the trade routes from the area. But this was exceptional. For the most part, the slave trade depopulated the region and created animosities among its peoples. Colonialists would soon exploit this discord to their own advantage.French Colonialism
Located in the remote heart of Africa, the area that is now the CAR saw a relatively late arrival of Europeans and colonialism. At the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 the European powers had determined the “rules of the game” for the Scramble for Africa. A few years later, in 1889, French expeditionary forces established a post on the Ubangi River in the present-day CAR. Paul Crampel’s expedition of 1891 and others that followed secured treaties with African chiefs who were hoping to gain protection and advantage over their enemies. In 1894 France declared the area of Oubangui-Chari (the modern-day CAR) a colony. French control of the area was at first tenuous. But in 1898, after the Franco-British confrontation at Fashoda on the Nile River, France sought to occupy Oubangui-Chari militarily in order to control the Chad Basin and unite its Central, West, and North African possessions. In 1900 French-led Algerian, Senegalese, and local troops completed their mission by killing Rabih and defeating his troops near Lake Chad.Even before the French had fully occupied the region, they set up concessionary companies to exploit its wealth of wild rubber and timber. Holding legal rights over the territories under their concession, seventeen companies controlled more than half the land and subjected their populations to military conscription, taxation, and forced labor as agricultural workers and porters. These practices (as well as company abuses) led to international protests and incited local rebellions, particularly among the Gbaya and Mandija people, between 1909 and 1911. Local resistance forced the French to conquer the area piecemeal—river by river, and valley by valley. Ultimately, the governor general of French Equatorial Africa in Brazzaville held administrative responsibility for Oubangui-Chari, while poorly trained local administrators, headquartered at Bangui, exercised authoritarian rule.Between the 1890s and 1930s, French military aggression and forced labor requirements spread disease throughout the colony’s population. Meanwhile, French demands for cash crops and tax payments further undermined the people’s ability to feed themselves. Scholars estimate that the region’s population dropped by one-third to one-half due to malnutrition and disease during these decades. Between 1928 and 1930, much of the population once again rebelled in the so-called Kongo Wara War, a series of local revolts against forced labor and taxation. In the 1930s, facing widespread economic stagnation in French Equatorial Africa, colonial officials forced the population to grow cotton and coffee for the global market. Alarmed at the decline in the available labor force, the French developed a primary health care system in an effort to control the spread of sleeping sickness. The educational system, however, remained impoverished, and the companies were still controlled by Europeans.During World War II, as prices rose for cotton, coffee, diamond, and rubber exports, Oubangui-Chari enjoyed economic prosperity. As a result, the French built new roads to facilitate trade. This economic boom began to open the economy to Africans, who entered into commerce, transport, timber, and commercial farming. After the war, French citizenship was extended to all Africans in French colonies, and a 1956 law granted Africans equal voting rights in colonial elections. These events encouraged a proliferation of nationalist political parties in Oubangui-Chari. Most prominent were the Union Oubanguienne and the quasi-religious Movement for the Social Evolution of Black Africa, led by Barthélemy Boganda, the first Oubangui Catholic priest and representative to the French National Assembly.Boganda, recognizing the limits of his influence in France, returned to Oubangui-Chari to organize a grassroots movement of small African producers to oppose French colonialism. After his arrest and detention by the French, Boganda became a folk hero and, though no longer a priest, was considered a messianic figure and the leading nationalist. Still, the relatively conservative Boganda remained sympathetic to French interests and did not advocate immediate independence. With the rush toward independence in much of Francophone Africa, however, in 1958 Boganda called for independence for Oubangui-Chari. Boganda envisioned Oubangui-Chari not as an independent country, but as part of a larger, more economically viable United States of Latin Africa that would include the present-day states of Angola, Cameroon, both Congos, CHAD, GABON, RWANDA, and Burundi. But differences among the nationalist leadership in the various colonies soon made such a federation impossible, and later that year Boganda accepted a constitution covering only Oubangui-Chari, renamed the Central African Republic. Poised to become president of the independent CAR, Boganda was killed in a mysterious airplane crash in 1959, just before legislative elections. The twenty-nine-year-old David Dacko, a family member and close confidant of the popular Boganda, succeeded him.Neocolonial Independence
The Central African Republic became independent in August 1960, with Dacko as president. France continued to be intimately involved politically, economically, and militarily in the CAR. The 1958 constitution, which preserved close ties with France, remained in effect, and initially a de facto dual French and Central African administration governed the CAR. Dacko relied heavily on French administrative and military support for his authoritarian rule. He introduced a single-party system in 1962, circumscribed legislative powers, and extended presidential terms to seven years. He was partially successful in securing local control of the economy through limited nationalization, but French corporations continued to control much of the economy. Dacko’s greatest success was probably in education—the number of children attending school doubled during his presidency.With the economy failing due to declining commodity prices, growing corruption, and ill-planned development projects, Dacko was preparing to relinquish power to his military chief of staff when his cousin, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa, overthrew him on December 31 1965. Most Central Africans initially welcomed the change. But over the next thirteen years, Bokassa’s corrupt, dictatorial, wasteful, and ultimately macabre rule nearly destroyed the country. Bokassa ruled by personal fiat. He dismissed legislators at will, had opponents killed, and allowed only a handful of people to participate in politics.Like his predecessors, Bokassa was dependent upon French support. Although Bokassa paid his own military well, after a rumored coup plot in 1967 he requested and received French military protection. In 1972 he named himself president-for-life and asserted authority over state-owned enterprises. French corporations retained control of most of the country’s diamond exports, timber concessions, agricultural estates, and import-export trade. Bokassa, meanwhile, diverted income from these firms for his own enrichment. In the 1970s, exports to and imports from France accounted for over 60 percent of the country’s trade, and almost 90 percent of the CAR’s aid came from France. But the country’s development came to a standstill as Bokassa pocketed much of the aid, or used it for unnecessary and unsuccessful projects.After evading several coup attempts, in 1977 the president-for-life crowned himself Emperor Bokassa in an elaborate coronation ceremony modeled after Napoleon’s, complete with a diamond-studded crown. The coronation reportedly cost one-third of the government’s annual revenue, though France underwrote much of the expense. Bokassa also enthroned several relatives, including his wife as empress, and created an imperial court near his hometown.The renamed Central African Empire had a short life. A fiscal crisis in mid-1979 forced the government to reduce school loans and withhold payment of government salaries, and student protests and violent demonstrations became common in the streets of Bangui. In September of that year, students protested the requirement that they purchase uniforms from a factory owned by Bokassa’s wife. In response, troops massacred more than 100 schoolchildren; according to many accounts, Bokassa himself participated in the slaughter. International outcry ensued, and the French, concluding that Bokassa had outlived his usefulness, sent troops to oust him. They reinstated Dacko as president and backed him financially, though he also remained dependent on the elites who had provided support for Bokassa as well as Dacko’s first presidency.Dacko left the rebuilding of the country to France, and concentrated his efforts on consolidating his power. But student protests, strikes, and occasional attacks on government officials continued, and opposition parties organized. In 1981, under both French and internal pressure, Dacko passed a multiparty constitution and held presidential elections—which were clearly fraudulent, and which he won. Dacko used military force to repress opposition. Giscard d’Estaing’s 1981 defeat in France, however, left Dacko without external support. When internal opposition reached new heights, army chief of staff André Kolingba forced Dacko to resign, and declared himself president.After a brief political honeymoon, a coup attempt surfaced and Kolingba clamped down on opponents of his military regime, especially the popular politician Ange-Félix Patassé. Kolingba increasingly relied on his ethnic kin from the Mbaka region, as well as a select group of corrupt officers within his military committee. To provide a veneer of legitimacy, Kolingba created a new party, the Central African Democratic Assembly, and held single-party elections in 1986. But Kolingba’s repressive rule and his enforcement of the economic austerity measures required by foreign lenders sparked strikes and riots in the capital. Facing growing internal unrest and international pressure, in 1993 Kolingba agreed to hold open presidential and legislative elections. Both Kolingba and Dacko ran; however, opposition candidate Patassé and his party, the Movement for the Liberation of the Central African People, won the elections on a platform promising to pay the back salaries of soldiers and civil servants.But the CAR’s disastrous finances made full repayment impossible. Anticipating a loss of influence under civilian government, the military mutinied in May 1996, and Patassé called upon the French to suppress the revolt. Opposition politicians subsequently demanded elections. Unrest continued, and many foreign aid workers left the country. In early 1998, the United Nations sent an all-African peacekeeping force to the CAR to enforce the so-called Bangui Accords of 1997, which called for an armistice and new elections. Patassé was reelected in the 1999 presidential election, which the opposition claimed was rigged. This new term, however, proved short-lived; in March 2003 Patassé was ousted in a coup led by François Bozize, who declared himself president and established a new government. Bozize promised new elections, which were finally held in 2005. Bozize won a relatively small majority of the vote, necessitating a runoff election, which he also won. Despite such small steps, the calamitous history of the “Cinderella” of Africa has continued to unfold around a people who remain poor, despite their country’s rich potential.See also Islam in Africa.
Central African Republic
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