History of the Central African Republic
Approximately 10,000 years ago, desertification forced hunter-gatherer societies south into the Sahel regions of northern Central Africa, where some groups settled and began farming as part of the Neolithic Revolution.
[1] Initial farming of white yam progressed into millet and sorghum, and then later the domestication of African oil palm improved the groups' nutrition and allowed for expansion of the local populations.
[1] The Bouar Megaliths in the western region of the country indicate an advanced level of habitation dating back to the very late Neolithic Era (c. 3500-2700 BC).
[11] The territory of modern Central African Republic is known to have been settled from at least the 7th century on by overlapping empires, including the Kanem-Bornu, Ouaddai, Baguirmi, and Dafour groups based on the Lake Chad region and along the Upper Nile.
[15] Count Savorgnan de Brazza established the French Congo and sent expeditions up the Ubangi River from Brazzaville in an effort to expand France's claims to territory in Central Africa.
[12] The French asserted their legal claim to the area through an 1887 convention with Congo Free State (privately owned by Leopold II of Belgium), which accepted France possession of the right bank of the Oubangui River.
[12] Once European negotiators had agreed upon the borders of the French Congo, France had to decide how to pay for the costly occupation, administration, and development of the territory it had acquired.
In return for the right to exploit these lands by buying local products and selling European goods, the companies promised to pay rent to France and to promote the development of their concessions.
At the same time, the French colonial administration began to force the local population to pay taxes and to provide the state with free labor.
reported abuses committed by private company militias, and their own colonial colleagues and troops, but efforts to hold these people accountable almost invariably failed.
When any news of atrocities committed against Central Africans reached France and caused an outcry, investigations were undertaken and some feeble attempts at reform were made, but the situation on the ground in Ubangi-Shari remained virtually unchanged.
They took advantage of their treaties with the French to procure more weapons, which were used to capture more slaves: much of the eastern half of Ubangi-Shari was depopulated as a result of slave-trading by local rulers during the first decade of colonial rule.
[citation needed] In 1911, the Sangha and Lobaye basins were ceded to Germany as part of an agreement which gave France a free hand in Morocco.
New forms of forced labor were also introduced, however, as the French conscripted large numbers of Ubangians to work on the Congo-Ocean Railway; many of these recruits died of exhaustion and illness as a result of the poor conditions.
Peaceful opposition to recruitment for railway construction and rubber tapping, mistreatment by European concessionary companies, began in the mid-1920s, but these efforts descended into violence in 1928, when over 350,000 natives rebelled against the colonial administration.
[12] The French constitutional referendum of September 1958 dissolved the AEF, and on 1 December of the same year the Assembly declared the birth of the autonomous Central African Republic with Boganda as head of government.
[24] Dacko encouraged the rapid "Centralafricanization" of the country's administration, which was accompanied by growing corruption and inefficiency, and he expanded the number of civil servants, which greatly increased the portion of the national budget needed to pay salaries.
Dacko's efforts to promote economic and political reforms proved ineffectual, and on 20 September 1981, he in turn was overthrown in a bloodless coup by General André Kolingba.
[12] The process of democratization quickened in 1986 with the creation of a new political party, the Rassemblement Démocratique Centrafricain (RDC), and the drafting of a new constitution that subsequently was ratified in a national referendum.
When elections were finally held in 1993, again with the help of the international community and the UN Electoral Assistance Unit, Ange-Félix Patassé led in the first round and Kolingba came in fourth behind Abel Goumba and David Dacko.
Patassé's party, the Mouvement pour la Libération du Peuple Centrafricain (MLPC) or Movement for the Liberation of the Central African People, gained a plurality but not an absolute majority of seats in parliament, which meant it required coalition partners to rule effectively.
In 1996 - 1997, reflecting steadily decreasing public confidence in the government's erratic behaviour, three mutinies against Patassé's administration were accompanied by widespread destruction of property and heightened ethnic tension.
The army chief of staff, Abel Abrou, and General François N'Djadder Bedaya were killed, but Patasse retained power with the assistance of troops from Libya and rebel FLC soldiers from the DRC led by Jean-Pierre Bemba.
After François Bozizé seized power in 2003, the Central African Republic Bush War began with the rebellion by the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (UFDR), led by Michel Djotodia.
[50] Armed entrepreneurs had carved out personal fiefdoms in which they set up checkpoints, collect illegal taxes, and take in millions of dollars from the illicit coffee, mineral, and timber trades.
[56] Tensions erupted in competition between ex-Séléka militias arising over control of a goldmine in November 2016, where a coalition formed by the MPC[57] and the FPRC (incorporating elements of their former enemy, the Anti-balaka)[58] attacked the UPC.
The thinly spread MINUSCA relied on Ugandan as well as American special forces to keep the peace in the southeast as they were part of a campaign to eliminate the Lord's Resistance Army but the mission ended in April 2017.
[58] By the latter half of 2017, the fighting largely shifted to the Southeast where the UPC reorganized and were pursued by the FPRC and Anti-balaka with the level of violence only matched by the early stage of the war.
The MNLC, founded in October 2017,[72] was led by Ahamat Bahar, a former member and co-founder of FPRC and MRC, and is allegedly backed by Fulani fighters from Chad.
The Christian[73] militant group RJ was formed in 2013, mostly by members of the presidential guard of former president Ange Felix Patassé, and were composed mainly of ethnic Sara-Kaba.
