History of Kinshasa
The origins of the modern-day city date to 1881 when a trading post was established on the site by Henry Morton Stanley on behalf of the International Association of the Congo.
He named it Léopoldville (French) or Leopoldstad (Dutch) in honour of King Leopold II who was his patron and subsequently King-Sovereign of the Congo Free State established in 1885.
It expanded rapidly and supplanted a number of nearby villages, including one a short distance to the east known as Kinshasa, and its importance as an administrative centre grew.
The popular music genre of Congolese rumba first emerged in Léopoldville and Brazzaville in this period and Lingala spread as a lingua franca along populations around the Congo River.
As an early example of Mobutu's programme of retour à l'authenticité for the removal of foreign and colonial influences, the city was renamed Kinshasa in 1966 after a pre-existing African residential area.
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.
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.
[citation needed] Henry Morton Stanley established a trading post on a hill close to the shore of Ngaliema Bay in 1881 some distance to the west of the modern-day city centre.
Starting from a point thirty feet below the blockhouse, and sloping gently down to the landing place, gardens of young bananas and vegetables extended beyond these huts.
However, Kinshasa did not profit greatly from the emergence of copper industry in Katanga Province after the First World War, the output from which was diverted first through British territories and then through Portuguese Angola.
[1] Léopoldville 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.
[10] 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.
[11][1] 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.
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.
[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.
