Settlements in the Democratic Republic of the Congo - Cities, Towns and Villages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kinshasa (Paperback)

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Cities, Towns and Villages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kinshasa, List of Cities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Congo. Excerpt: Kinshasa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The La Gombe district, off of the Boulevard du 30 Juin in Kinshasa. The city was founded as a trading post by Henry Morton Stanley in 1881 and named Lopoldville in honor of King Leopold II of Belgium, who controlled the vast territory that is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, not as a colony but as a private property. The post flourished as the first navigable port on the Congo River above Livingstone Falls, a series of rapids over 300 kilometres (190 mi) below Leopoldville. At first, all goods arriving by sea or being sent by sea had to be carried by porters between Lopoldville and Matadi, the port below the rapids and 150 km (93 mi) from the coast. The completion of the Matadi-Kinshasa portage railway in 1898 provided a faster and more efficient alternative route around the rapids and sparked the rapid development of Lopoldville. By 1920, the city was elevated to capital of the Belgian Congo, replacing the town of Boma in the Congo estuary. When the Belgian Congo became independent of Belgium in 1960, Dutch was dropped as an official language. 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. In 1966, Lopoldville was renamed Kinshasa for a village named Kinchassa that once stood near the site. The city grew rapidly under Mobutu, drawing people from across the country who came in search of their fortunes or to escape ethnic strife elsewhere. This inevitably brought about a change to the city's ethnic and linguistic composition ... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=45773