On this day 52 years ago, the Central African Republic declared independence from France. In 1889 the French had established a post at Bangui, and the region became a French colony. Negotiations with the Belgians and the Germans in 1894 established borders with the Congo Free State and Cameroon, and the border with Sudan along the Congo-Nile watershed was fixed in 1899. To fund its administration costs, France granted a number of private companies rights to exploit the land in exchange for rent payments.
The private companies engaged in exploitation with due vigour, using brutal methods to extract forced labour from the locals. In 1958, as the movement towards independence was occurring across Africa, the colony became an autonomous territory under the name Central African Republic, but the leading nationalist politician Barthélemy Boganda was killed in a plane crash in 1959, so that a power struggle ensued leading up to the country’s independence in 1960.
Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa seized the presidency through a military coup in 1965, subsequently declaring himself president for life and taking the title Emperor Bokassa I. Bokassa was ejected in a coup in 1979, and power changed hands again in 1981 through another coup. The country has since had a troubled political history and, as one of the poorest countries in the world, is dependent on foreign aid.