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CENTRAL AFRICA
Countries constituting
Central Africa
Cameroon,
Central African Republic,
Chad,
Congo,
Congo (Democratic Republic of),
Equatorial Guinea,
Gabon, Sao Tome & Principe.
 The great rain forest basin of the
Congo River embraces most of the
Central Africa. Late in the 19th century, Europeans colonized the region. The tribal kingdoms were split between
France,
Belgium,
Portugal and
Spain. Many who belong to a small growing urban population speak French, along with hundreds of dialects.
Crops for export include cocoa, coffee, and rubber. Cattle farming is limited to areas free of the tsetse fly, and fish from the rivers are protein sources. Timber provides export revenue or several countries, although concern about the uncontrolled logging is growing.
Source:http://www.africanculturalcenter.org/1_6central.html
Overview
With control of the Belgian Free State transferred from King Leopold to the Belgian republican government in 1908, all of
Central Africa falls under the rule of European countries by the early twentieth century. As
France,
Belgium,
Portugal, and (prior to 1918)
Germany implement new political and economic structures to consolidate their control over
Central Africa's immense resources. The exploitative abuses of Belgian colonial rule were experienced by local populations as especially brutal and traumatic. During and after the colonial era, African artists and musicians such as Samuel Fosso, Grand Kallé, and Cheri Samba incorporate European techniques into their own creative processes, producing works that address the friction between traditional and colonial/postcolonial ways of life and speak to the aspirations of the emerging urban class.
Europeans' increased exposure to African societies and material culture, fostered by museum expeditions and the rapidly developing field of anthropology, inspires artists from Pablo Picasso to the British Vorticists to explore new subjects and methods of visual representation. The imposition of colonial boundaries and governmental systems gives rise to developing national consciousness among many Central Africans, inspiring movements to achieve political independence and reclaim indigenous African identity, such as Mobuto Sese Seko's "authenticity" campaign and Tshibumba Kanda Matulu's series of paintings on Congolese history.
Source: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/11/sfc/ht11sfc.htm |
