Misbelieves and facts about the “pre- DRC” Congo under cover of a historical review

Abstract

The huge Central African country had many names in the course of decades. Nowadays it is known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo with a history which can be characterized as a series of constant storms. Europeans arriving as explorers soon became aggressive colonizers by their political and economic ambitions. While slavetrade and hard labour exploited the enormous amount of raw materials and decimated the population, economic exploitation had destroyed nature as well. The author reviews the history of the Congo with thorough chronological details from the era of colonization to independence, which also includes the local consequences of Cold War confrontations, the establishment of Zaire and the recrudescent civil war.