The earliest known human settlements in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been dated back to the Middle Stone Age , approximately 90, years ago. The first real states, such as the Kongo, the Lunda, the Luba and Kuba, appeared south of the equatorial forest on the savannah from the 14th century onwards. The Kingdom of Kongo controlled much of western and central Africa including what is now the western portion of the DR Congo between the 14th and the early 19th centuries.
At its peak it had many as , people, and its capital was known as Mbanza-Kongo south of Matadi , in modern-day Angola. In the late 15th century, Portuguese sailors arrived in the Kingdom of Kongo, and this led to a period of great prosperity and consolidation, with the king's power being founded on Portuguese trade.
King Afonso I — had raids carried out on neighboring districts in response to Portuguese requests for slaves. After his death, the kingdom underwent a deep crisis. The Atlantic slave trade occurred from approximately to , with the entire west coast of Africa targeted, but the region around the mouth of the Congo suffered the most intensive enslavement.
Over a strip of coastline about kilometres mi long, about 4 million people were enslaved and sent across the Atlantic to sugar plantations in Brazil, the US and the Caribbean. From onwards, there was a higher demand for slaves in the US which led to more people being enslaved. By , more than 15, people were shipped annually from the Loango Coast, north of the Congo. However, de facto control of such a huge area took decades to achieve. Many outposts were built to extend the power of the state over such a vast territory.
In , the Force Publique was set up, a colonial army with white officers and black soldiers. Over the late 19th century, various Christian including Catholic and Protestant missionaries arrived intending to convert the local population. A railway between Matadi and Stanley Pool was built in the s. Following unrest, Belgium granted Congo independence in However, the Congo remained unstable, leading to the Congo Crisis , where the regional governments of Katanga and South Kasai attempted to gain independence with Belgian support.
