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Zaire was established following Mobutu's seizure of power in a military coup in 1965, after five years of political upheaval following independence from Belgium known as the Congo Crisis. Zaire had a strongly centralist constitution, and foreign assets were nationalized. The period is sometimes referred to as the Second Congolese Republic.
On independence the country adopted the name "Republic of the Congo" (République du Congo). The French colony of Middle Congo (Moyen Congo) also chose the name Republic of the Congo upon its independence, so the two countries were more commonly known as Congo-Léopoldville and Congo-Brazzaville, after their capital cities.
[27] [28] [29] The river was known as Zaire during the 16th and 17th centuries; Congo seems to have replaced Zaire gradually in English usage during the 18th century, and Congo is the preferred English name in 19th-century literature, although references to Zaire as the name used by the natives (i.e., derived from Portuguese usage) remained ...
On 13 January, King Baudouin addressed the nation by radio and declared that Belgium would work towards the full independence of the Congo "without delay, but also without irresponsible rashness". [84] Without committing to a specific date for independence, the government of prime minister Gaston Eyskens had a multi-year transition period in ...
The Belgian Congo, today the Democratic Republic of the Congo, highlighted on a map of Africa. Colonial rule in the Congo began in the late 19th century. King Leopold II of Belgium, frustrated by Belgium's lack of international power and prestige, attempted to persuade the Belgian government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexplored Congo Basin.
The state of Zaire's legal system as established by the constitution led Marcel Lihau, a jurist and former president of the Supreme Court of Justice who had fled the country, to remark that "Mobutu is the constitution in Zaire". [7] Young and Turner did, however, note that the "Mobutist state never approximated the leviathan vision embodied in ...
[4] The Manifesto of N'sele also laid out the intentions of the government which included expansion of the national government's authority, a program committed to upgrading labour standards, having the country gain economic independence, and the creation of an "authentic nationalism" in Zaire. [5]
Various states have never declared independence throughout their formations and hence are not included in the main list on this page, including states that were formed by the unification of multiple independent states, such as the United Kingdom, United States, and Tanzania, including states that did declare independence, but whose most recent ...