CAR is a state in the heart of the African continent with a territory of about 622,400 square km and a population of 4.6 million people.
According to the UN, the republic is among the least developed countries in Africa in socio-economic terms, however, the country has rich deposits of uranium, oil, gold and diamonds.
This country’s inland location meant that it didn’t have the first wave of contact with Europeans as they rounded the coast of Africa looking for a passageway to India.
The isolation ended with the arrival of the slave trade with some local tribes becoming suppliers to the Europeans and Arab traders. The slave trade depopulated large parts of the region and shattered the sophisticated societies that had developed. To compound the chaos, at the end of the 19th century, the region couldn’t escape the so-called ‘Scramble for Africa’ as France, Germany, and Belgium all vied for control of the land.
Already controlling large swathes of surrounding Africa, the French won out and in 1894, set up a dependency called Ubangi-Shari. In 1910, Ubangi-Shari became part of the Federation of French Equatorial Africa.
The history of Ubangi-Shari then runs along similar lines to the other French colonies with the French imposing and abusing harsh labour laws to exact the cost of maintaining their expensive overseas colonies