The History Of Congo Timeline
A Brief history of Congo: The area now known as the DRC was populated as early as 90,000 years ago, as evidenced by the discovery of the Semliki Sirlo in Katanda, one of the oldest retractable harpoons ever found, which is believed to have been used to catch the river’s giant fish.
The history of Congo dates back to the Kongo kingdom founded by Néné MINILOUKENI. The pygmies are the first inhabitants of the Congo. The country was then affected by the great migration of the Bantu, who came from the north along the coast and rivers. Several kingdoms whose origins are not yet fully known appeared: the Teke kingdom in the north in the lands; several Kongo kingdoms, on the coast and in the Mayombe massif.

Some historians believe that the Bantu peoples began to settle in the extreme northwest of Central Africa at the beginning of the fifth century and then gradually began to expand southwards. Their propagation was accelerated by the transition to the Iron Age. The inhabitants of the south and southeast were predominantly San peoples of hunter-gatherers. The development of metal tools in this period of time revolutionized agriculture and animal husbandry, and this led to the displacement.
The tenth century marked the final expansion of the Bantu into West and Central-East Africa. Emerging populations soon made possible intricate local, regional and foreign trade networks that traded predominantly in salt, iron and copper.
Religion Percentage in Congo
Religious Beliefs In The Democratic Republic Of The Congo (Congo-Kinshasa)
Rank | Belief System | Share of the Population of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa) |
---|---|---|
1 | Roman Catholic Christianity | 43.0% |
2 | Protestant Christianity | 25.8% |
3 | Islam | 12.6% |
4 | Jamaa, Jehovah’s Witness, Mormon, and Other Forms of Christianity | 11.2% |
Indigenous and Other Beliefs | 7.4% |
The History On Congo
Independence: 1960
Number of inhabitants: 5.2 million
Capital: Brazzaville (1.1 million inhabitants)
Surface area: 342,000 km², about half the France
Second largest city in the country: Pointe Noire (650,000 inhabitants) 62% of the population is urban
Resources: oil, wood, miscellaneous minerals
Industry: tobacco, textiles, cement, soap, …
Languages spoken: French (official language, spoken by 78% of those over 10), Bantu languages: Lingala and Kituba, Mbochi, Teke languages, and more than forty other languages
History Of The Congo
Congo history timeline: In order to understand the history of congo, it is important to realize that the country as it is today, with its current borders did not exist. It was part of a whole within the Congo Basin, a basin that still now enjoys a great homogeneity of population.
This name of Congo or Kongo, comes from that of a kingdom that would have appeared in the thirteenth or fourteenth century and whose capital was located in the north of present-day Angola. The Mbuti Pygmies would be the first inhabitants of the Congo and in any case, one of the oldest populations of Humanity.
About 2800 years ago, the Bantu people came from the north along the coast and waterways. The Bantu introduced ironworking and built a commercial network in the Congo Basin.
The term “Bantu” is a technical linguistic term that originally refers to speakers of a large linguistic group that covers most of Central and Southern Africa. It is composed of about four hundred and fifty languages.
More concretely, the word Bantu is formed of 2 radicals. The radical “BA” which forms the plural in the Bantu language, so “the” and the radical “ntou” which means “Man”.

European Colonization in Congo
In 1875, Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza undertook his first voyage. He reached the Congo in 1879 by going up the course of the Ogoué. In 1880, he passed a protectorate treaty (for the benefit of the France) with the souverrain Téké, King Makoko. In 1880, Savorgnan de Brazza founded the post of MFoa which later became Brazzaville.
In 1883, Lieutenant Cordier in turn founded Pointe-Noire. In 1885, Congo became one of the four states of French Equatorial Africa, and Brazzaville the capital of the A.E.F. In 1891 the colony of the French Congo was created. Then began a long colonial period, marked among other things by the exploitation of the country’s natural resources. History of Congo.
The Arrival Of The Portuguese In Congo
In 1482, after the first reconnaissance by Portuguese navigators, the explorer Don Diégo Cao reached the mouth of the Congo. The Portuguese settled there and transformed the capital of the kingdom, Mbanza Kongo (north of present-day Angola), into a city of European appearance that had up to 40,000 inhabitants and that they named San Salvador. History of Congo.
Their enterprise of evangelizing the kingdom was quite quickly crowned with success at least among the ruling class, which saw in Christianization a tool likely to strengthen its power by sacralizing it. But it is the slave trade, which behind the veneer of Christianization, will be the real cement of ties with Europeans.
This slave trade, which took place along the coasts and within the Kongo and Teke kingdoms, created huge demographic drains throughout the territory.
Diosso, Forgotten Capital Of The Loango Kingdom
At the end of the 19th century, when the France undertook colonial expeditions in the current Congolese region, it was now composed only of the two former provinces that once formed the former kingdom of Kongo, the province of Loango and the province of Anzicou which became respectively the kingdom of Loango (with Diosso as its capital) and the Batéké kingdom (with Mbey or Mbé as its capital). History of Congo.
Let’s immerse ourselves in the Loango kingdom through the writings of Benoit Gnaly: “Diosso, capital of the kingdom of the Vilis (which) is dying”.
25 km from the current Pointe-Noire, there is Diosso, perched on the edges of a cliff that bears his name.
The traditional capital of the Vilis kingdom, Diosso was, and still is, the residence of the monarchs who succeeded each other since the most remote times.
A remarkable activity reigned in Diosso. As soon as the weept of day were made, brave people hurried to their occupations, some to fish, others to hunt, to harvest palm wine; still others operated salt pans or joined forces to cut down large trees whose logs were sold to the many European trading companies.
“Small crafts were flourishing. Under the tall, tall and well-shaded mango trees, islands of craftsmen were busy around their respective occupations: one group made pickaxes, another made sweets, further, around large pots turned people who blew on fire on which boiled mouambe from which oil was extracted. Under the tireless hoes of brave women, the fields became splendid food plantations that covered the needs of the inhabitants. But already, for three centuries, slavery and the slave trade seriously bled the loango and Batéké kingdoms in men and women.” History of Congo.
“The slave traders in the kingdom of Loango seemed very numerous and active. The trade in the eighteenth century was in the hands of the French and English after having been Dutch in the previous century and Portuguese before. But these foreigners had no forts and it was the king of Loango who directed the operations himself. The inhabitants of the Vili country had organized the Caravans for long-distance trafficking even before 1600. History of Congo.
This trade was one of the pillars of the triangular trade, which consisted of Europeans going to buy slaves in Africa for European manufactured goods and then selling these slaves in the Americas, then returning to Europe loaded with sugar, cocoa, coffee, and other scarce commodities. In the nineteenth century, Punta Negra or Pointe Noire prevailed over Loango due to the greater depth near the shore. History of Congo.

The arrival of the French
French penetration began around 1875 with Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza who reached the Congo in 1879 by going up the course of the Ogoué. In 1880, he had Ilôo I sign a treaty of sovereignty, and founded the post of Mfoa, in reference to a river that served the city, and which later became Brazzaville.
At the same time, Lieutenant Cordier explored the region of Kouilou and Niari, and had Ma-Loango, the main leader of the Vilis, sign a treaty that recognized the sovereignty of the France over the kingdom of Loango, and in turn founded Pointe-Noire in 1883. The experience of Brazza (Commissioner General), who has to deal with an underpopulated territory, social and commercial structures disrupted by the violence of foreign penetration and a glaring lack of resources, is a failure. History of Congo.
He was dismissed in January 1898 and gave way to the exploitation of resources by concession companies which, as he had predicted, would become the source of the worst excesses vis-à-vis the local population. History of Congo.
Congo Independence Day
The conditions of exploitation of the colony explain why nationalism developed very quickly in the Congo. In 1926, André Matswa founded a friendly to help veterans who had taken part alongside the French army in the First World War. This friendship quickly turned into a protest movement and aroused a real popular enthusiasm. History of Congo.
Congolese nationalism really took shape after the Second World War. In 1945, the Congolese elected the first Congolese deputy, Félix Tchikaya, to the Constituent Assembly in Paris. In 1946 he founded the Congolese Progressive Party. But it was Father Fulbert Youlou, founder of the Democratic Union for the Defense of African Interests, who won the municipal elections of 1956. In 1958, the referendum on the French Community obtained 99% “YES” in the Middle Congo. The Congo became an autonomous republic, with Fulbert Youlou as Prime Minister. In 1959, unrest broke out in Brazzaville and the French army intervened: Youlou was elected President of the Republic and on August 15, 1960, the Congo gained independence. History of Congo.
Brazzaville, Capital of free France
During the French defeat of June 1940, the French colonies were torn between the 2 camps: Vichy and Pétain or de Gaulle and the France Libre. During a tour of Africa, General de Gaulle obtained the support of the AEF and Brazzaville became “capital of the Free France” on October 26, 1940, a status it retained until 1943. On October 27, 1940, an ordinance of the General created the Council of Defense of the Empire, the first decision-making body of the Free France and on November 16, he instituted the Order of the Liberation. History of Congo.
Radio-Brazzaville, a center of shortwave rebroadcasts, received throughout Africa and even in France, became its national transmitter while “France D’abord”, a bimonthly newspaper printed in Leopoldville published its first issue on Sunday, January 12, 1941.
It was still on African soil, in Brazzaville, that General de Gaulle delivered the famous speech of 30 January 1944 which opened the “Brazzaville Conference“, a speech in which he recognized and proclaimed the dignity and capacity of the peoples of the Empire and which would henceforth make him the one who would be called “the Man of Brazzaville”. History of Congo.
The history of congo Timeline
Brief The History of congo timeline as below:
- 2nd half of the XIVth Foundation of the Kongo Kingdom on the borders of Congo and Angola
- 1880 Savorgnan de Brazza goes up the Ogoué and reaches the Congo
- 1885 Creation of the Congo Free State, recognized by the Berlin Conference
- 1910-1958 Regrouping of four colonies in French Equatorial Africa: Congo Brazzaville, Gabon, Oubangui Chari and Chad
- November 1940 French Equatorial Africa and Cameroon rally to General de Gaulle
- January 30, 1944 Brazzaville Conference on the Future Status of the French Colonies
- 1945 The first Congolese deputy Jean Félix Tchicaya is elected to the Constituent Assembly
- 1947 Creation of the Congolese Progressive Party (PPC) of Tchicaya and the African Socialist Movement (MSA) of Jacques Opangault
- 1958 Middle Congo becomes Autonomous Republic of Congo
- January 1959 Violent riots between the UDDIA (Democratic Union for the Defense of African Interests) created by Father Fulbert Youlou and the PPC
- November 1959 Abbé F. Youlou becomes president
- August 15, 1960 Complete independence of the Republic of the Congo
- March 1961 Re-election of Father Fulbert Youlou
- August 13 to 15, 1963 The 3 glorious; Father Youlou is overthrown
- December 8, 1963 Adoption of a new Constitution
- 1963 to 1968 Massamba Debate Alphonse, president, adopts scientific socialism and establishes the single party
- August 5, 1968 Creation of the National Council of the Revolution (CNR) chaired by Captain Marien Ngouabi
- 1 January 1969 Captain Marien Ngouabi appointed President of the Republic
- January 1, 1970 The Republic of Congo-Brazzaville becomes the People’s Republic of Congo and adheres to the principles of Marxism-Leninism
- June 24, 1973 Adoption by referendum of a new constitution
- March 18, 1977 Assassination of President Marien Ngouabi
- April 5, 1977 Colonel Joachim Yombi Opango becomes President of the Republic
- February 5, 1979 The president is dismissed and Colonel Denis Sassou Nguesso succeeds him
- July 8, 1979 Adoption by referendum of a new constitution
- 30 July 1984 Re-election of Denis Sassou Nguesso
- 30 July 1989 Re-election of Denis Sassou Nguesso (3rd term)
- 30 September 1990 Establishment of a multi-party system
- 15 March 1992 Adoption by referendum of a new constitution. The People’s Republic of the Congo becomes the Republic of the Congo
- 16 August 1992 Pascal Lissouba elected by universal suffrage
- 5 June 1997 Fratricidal war that follows 5 years of unrest and massacres of population
- October 1997 Denis Sassou Nguesso proclaimed President of the Republic following the capture of Brazzaville
- December 1998 Violent clashes in Brazzaville, thousands flee the capital
- 20 January 2002 Adoption by referendum of a new Constitution establishing a presidential system
- 10 March 2002 Denis Sassou Nguesso is elected President of the Republic
- 12 July 2009 Re-election of Denis Sassou Nguesso
- March 20, 2016 Re-election of Denis Sassou Nguesso
Reference 1. History of Congo – Go Afrique
2. Congo – Its history, in brief – The official website of the Enfants-du-congo-bethanie!
3. History of Congo – Living in Congo (vivreaucongo.com)
4. The History of CONGO – CONGO-SITE: National Portal for Information and Advice on Congo Brazzaville