Congo

From the Bantu peoples and the coastal Kingdom of Loango, through the Atlantic slave trade, Brazza's founding of Brazzaville and the colony of Middle Congo within French Equatorial Africa, to independence in 1960, the Marxist People's Republic, and the long rule of Denis Sassou Nguesso.

The Republic of the Congo — Congo-Brazzaville, distinct from the larger Democratic Republic of the Congo to its south and east — lies on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, straddling the equator and drained by the Congo and Ubangi river systems. Its territory was settled in the first millennium CE by Bantu-speaking peoples, and from around the sixteenth century its coast was dominated by the Kingdom of Loango, a Vili state whose ports became major channels of the Atlantic slave and ivory trades; the northern reaches of the Kongo and the inland Teke (Anziku or Tio) kingdom also fell partly within the modern country. In 1880 the Italian-born French explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza signed a treaty with the Teke ruler Makoko and founded a post at Nkuna on the north bank of the Congo River, the future Brazzaville. The territory became the colony of Middle Congo (Moyen-Congo) and, from 1910, part of French Equatorial Africa, with Brazzaville as the federal capital; during the Second World War the city served as the capital of Free France, hosting the 1944 Brazzaville Conference. Colonial rule rested heavily on forced labour, most notoriously in building the Congo-Ocean Railway (1921–1934), which cost the lives of many thousands of conscripted workers. The country became independent on 15 August 1960 under Fulbert Youlou. After his fall in 1963 it moved leftward, and from 1969 to 1991 it was the People's Republic of the Congo, a one-party Marxist-Leninist state led by Marien Ngouabi and, from 1979, Denis Sassou Nguesso. A 1991 national conference opened a brief democratic period under Pascal Lissouba, but a civil war in 1997 returned Sassou Nguesso to power, and he has ruled since.