History of Kisangani

Leopold II of Belgium in December 1883. The city was known first as Falls Station (or "the Post Stanley Falls" or "The Falls" or simply "Boyoma" the African name of Boyoma Falls) and then with Belgian colonization of the area, it grew into a settlement called Stanleyville (after the explorer Henry Morton Stanley). A city terminus of steamer navigation on the Congo River, the town began as a Belgian trading post. It has been the major centre of the northern Congo since the late 19th century.

Stanley left Mr. Binnie, an engineer and a Scotsman, in charge to trade with the local people and to represent the Congo Free State. The name "Kisangani" was apparently used consistently by the local people, in conjunction with the name "Stanleyville" (as the city was referred to in French and respectively Stanleystad in Dutch). In Swahili the manual published by the Marist Brothers in the 20s, we find an example of substitution naming "from X to Stanleyville" which is translated "toka X Mpaka Kisangani". The name "Kisangani" is a Swahili rendering of the indigenous Congolese language word Boyoma, meaning “City on the Island”, also rendered in Lingala as Singitini (or Singatini) with the same meaning.

Soon after the establishment of relational ties between the Africans and Europeans, East African slavers from Zanzibar, often erroneously called "Arabs" by European writers of the time, reached Stanley Falls. Relations between Free State Officials and the slavers were strained and after a fight the Station was abandoned in 1887.

After the Arab-Euro wars in the Congo, in 1888 the Free State obtained (after negotiations in Zanzibar) an agreement to establish a form of power by appointing Mohammed Bin Alfan Mujreb Tippu Tip, one of the greatest Zanzibar slavers as first governor of the district of "Stanleyfalls" stretching from eastern Tanganyika in Ituri through Maniema