[4] Henry Morton Stanley, the first European to reach Isangi, passed through the town in December 1883 and estimated the population as 8,000.

[6] Although the people had begun to rebuild the town, they fled to the other bank of the river when Stanley's flotilla arrived.

[8] Arthur Conan Doyle noted in his book The Crime of the Congo that slavery and ivory poaching continued well after the Belgians had assumed power.

[9] In 1888, the Zanzibar-based trader Tippu Tip's nephew Rachid established a station at Isangi to provide a base for slaving operations in the lower reaches of the Lomani and along the channels of the Lopori and Maringa rivers.

However, the new colonial administrators began requisitioning labor to work on the rubber plantations, lowering the output of rice.