Why Are There Two Congos?
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- čas přidán 3. 05. 2024
- A short video explaining why there are two countries with very similar names. The Democratic Republic of the Congo and its neighbour, the Republic of the Congo. I also talk about some similar naming issues, as well as briefly looking at many African nations that share the same colour scheme.
In this video, I briefly touch on the European colonisation of Africa. This is a topic which I plan on doing an entire video on some day in the not too distant future.
MUSIC:
Kumasi Groove Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
I said "West" but meant East!! The text is correct but my narration is wrong. Austria comes from the German for EAST. Sorry about that!
This is a little different from my other videos, dealing with a fairly simply question which isn't exactly all that complex, and then later looking at some similar situations and then going off on a minor tangent about the flags. Perhaps I can get around to doing that video about the colonisation of Africa towards the end of this year.
I know some people prefer these kinds of short videos, that I plan on doing every so often, but the usual 10+ minute video about a complicated topic will always be my "normal" style of video. For the people who prefer longer, more in depth videos, those will remain my primary uploads, but hopefully you don't mind a wee change and a video like this often once in a while.
Thanks for watching. Sorry about the error!
Cheers, Chris.
I would pin this comment otherwise you gonna get flooded
Mike Hocksbig, or everyone like his comment so it stays on top.
It is now pinned, although I can assure you it will not stop people from pointing out the mistake!
Haha was just about to point it out...love your videos
Don’t worry any video by you is a pleasure :D
Rule 1 of country naming: every dictatorship must have democratic in its name
Jon Or "People's" like People's Republic of China.
How about the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea? That’s got both, which makes sense because they’re twice as totalitarian.
You don't see the proper Democracies yelling about it do you?
German Democratic Republic. They have the have Republic in there too.
Rule 1 of country behaviour: Dictatorship countries must accuse others of being dictatorship because arent like them. =P
"Leopoldville"
That's like naming Tel Aviv "Hitlerville."
That's like calling Kiev "Stalinville"
Exactly
Or calling Washington DC, Britishtown
Or Calling Hiroshima Rooseveltoplis
@@BGI_guy ya'll forgot about Stalingrad
King Leopold 2's reign over Congo is definitely one of the saddest atrocities in human history that is not that often talked about. Terrible.
SweetWheatsy cuz it wasn’t real libertarianism or something, therefore insn’t worth noting.
Read the book King Leopold’s Ghost, for a good history of this horrific period in world history.
Michael Brennan because it wasnt made on ((god chosen poeple))
Forgotten because its related to Belgium, a OTAN/NATO country satellite of US, but if was related to another country outside US web like......... Iran for example it will have a lot of TV shows, hollywood movies demonizing Iranians and etc.
ChongLi99 Well, it wasn't really connected to Belgium because the Congo was private property of Leopold and most people working there were mercenaries from all over Europe and even other africans
Imagine naming Warsaw as Hitlersburg
mini francis pretty cool name
Or Aleksandrów - from Russian Tsar Alexander I (or II or III, it doesn't make a difference).
leningrado
Imagine naming Berlin StalinVille like kiev and moscow
And even army of Hitler didnt make it to the warsaw wtf is wrong
Actually the Congos have the second closest capitals in the world. The closest are Rome and Vatican City.
Vexillology Hub Oh yeah it is, Because the Vatican City is literally INSIDE Rome.
Vexillology Hub it’s really kind of unfair though. Vatican City is the smallest nations while the Congos are sized like proper nations (even though they’re both poor)
( this comment is over a year old. if you’re here to comment about my incorrections made during such time ago, please refrain as I have already gotten such understanding from over 20+ comments. thx )
@@cadentopia HEY! that's racist!
@@thrashes6208 ok moody teen.
@@cadentopia ;)
I never wondered why there were two Congos, but I DID wonder why "WonderWhy" has uploaded within the space of less than 6 months
Uncle Podger That makes no sense...
kelvin pang You don't make sense
Zeke Yeager You automatically lost the argument
Goat-Emperor Bigs On the internet that phrase is ironic.
Uncle Podger i think its cuz hes losing subscribers cuz at da end he mentions that hes making another video
Hey, as a Congolese 🇨🇩 I must say you did a good job 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Unlike other neighbouring countries, we share the same culture and language with our twin 🇨🇬
@Bela T.T Actually,there were a lot of tribal nations,So both Kongo's never were in one Country,also their Northern parts were poorly populated before colonization.
@@kgb8681 Zongela classe. The Kingdom of Congo included northern Angola, southern DRC and southern Congo-Brazza. The Teke tribe lives from the Kinshasa region to Gabon. The ngala tribes group live in both sides of the congo river.
Heyyy I’m congolese too 🇨🇬 Yes we have the same culture
@Bela T.T we weren't a country before colonisation. We had kingdoms, empires and tribes and yes the Kongo Kingdom occupied both Congos and Angola.
Mimik 32 no it wasn’t a country back then, it was a Kingdom with different tribes living in it. Just like United Kingdom is today with Irish, Welsh, Scottish and English living together.. so here we are don’t say u haven’t learn something new on here.
"In the near future"
See you guys in 6 months
....anime...
Umbrella relevancy
See you then.
*6 Years.
Marylandbrony Don’t you mean 12 years?
The modern history of Africa is sad, but interesting. Props for shedding light on something we usually don't hear about !
Man. We don't hear much good or bad about africa. It's a bit of an ignored continent. Saying that, what we do hear is overly focused on the bad usually
Ethiopia seems to be making some political process. That's about it, really...
Why's it sad? For thousands and thousands of year the most dominant civilisation has take over less stronger civilisations. African kingdoms have taken over African kingdoms, Japan took over Korea and China, the Ottoman Empire etc etc
Decolonization was a mess with cold war interference and illogical borders that had no real relation to the people that lived in them.
Rwanda is starting to get to a decent place economically
Welcome to the "Congo Free State"
the most unfree state in the world
King Leopold: it's free real Congo State
@حج It is good Africans got independence. They were treated terribly by colonial powers.
Congo was a free state. It was recognised as a free state by United nation. While other African countries were being colonised, Congo had it independent. Until late 18th century when King Leopold took it as if was his on property. He used religion as an excuse to gain control of the Congo free state.
You know North Korea is actually called "The People's Democratic Republic of Korea"
As a Belgian before watching: "oh no..."
Welcome to my life as Spanish.
hahahhaahAHaHAhAHaHahsaHAhAHaH *laughs in german with no colonies cause it all got stolen by france*
name it was divided between England and France. Do you specially hate France?
And stolen... when you lose a war, it happens, that you lose territories.
Ps: I am not even French, but I remember, that France was far less populated than Germany, but they managed to win.
Wilhelm II. Yeah, but they were in the center of the action and they had allies like Germany had. Meanwhile, I remember, that France has the greatest number of victories.
So, I don’t really care about which one is the strongest (and my grandfather was Prussian), but I respect french people.
@Wilhelm II. Russia surrender, US was in the War in 1918, it was almost 1vs1 in the western front, british and french didn't fight at the same places. Yeah just an another weaboo triggered to had loose both World War :)
This is why you never let Europeans name countries ... or draw borders for that matter.
Well Egypt, Ethiopia and Libya were so named by Greeks and it didn't cause any harm tbh. You're right about borders tho!
The modern borders of Africa and the Middle East were drawn by Europeans. In Africa's case, the Europeans only wanted resources and profit. They did not care about the native Africans. The borders of their colonies forced tribes who may have been rivals for hundreds of years into the same colonies. But one thing many people forget is that Europeans often favored one tribe over another. This happened in modern-day Rwanda, where the Belgians favored the Tutsis over the Hutus. After Rwanda gained its independence, the Hutus took control of the government. In 1994, the Hutus began the Rwandan Genocide, in which 800,000 people were killed in only 100 days. The problem with tribes led to other conflicts in Africa, mainly civil wars.
GreninjaMasterGabe- Hmm, seems like diversity breeds conflict
SDZ Africa is still experiencing colonialism. From China this time
@@jerryberry5480 how by the chinese tell me how
Fun Fact: Most of the old Kingdom of Congo is now in Angola.
Yes, you're right. Even the capital of the kingdom M'Banza Kongo is in actual Angola (Lumumba region, I guess...)
Wow
an idiot Explain about Ghana please!
@@AnalystTosh Ghana Empire is located in Mali, Sahara desert, but Ghana the country is located on the coast of West Africa
@pokezee king-wolf pokezee king-wolf Doubtful, even if that's the case, that's not the reason for the name. The name Ghana was chosen because they needed a name that was not associated with any tribe, so decided to name it after a former WA empire. If it was associated with any tribe, and they knew that, they wouldn't have chosen it in the first place
Love how you cover lots of extra info instead of sticking to the base question. Answers usually lead to new questions, and you deliver on that the same way a curious mind works. Thanks for the good video!
_They never got Ethiopia_
-They never got -*-Thailand-*
They got it for a little bit though.
Cough cough Italia cough
Occupation by the fascists doesn't count.
Kinda does seeing as how they annexed it and it was official.
This was like 5 episodes of Name Explain in one, plus some history
Morrís much better than name explain
And Macedonian episode is also Name Explain
Years ago I lived in Switzerland.
Very occasionally we would have mail delayed becasue it had been sent to Swaziland.
...so yhaa...that was a thing...
.......Dude you got the stamps? XD
Seriously those things might actually have genuine worth!
That's insane lol. Though Swaziland changed its name to Eswatini.
@@gashafashi08 yep. with the "e" in lowercase. Swatini is officially the world's first electronic country
Iived in Brunei Darussalam (in SE Asia). Have had mail forwarded to Daar Es Salaam , Tanzania or Burundi.
lol when my family lived in Mozambique we would go to Swaziland all the time, so when I'd tell my American friends they'd assume I was saying Switzerland with an accent smh lol
*Rest In Peace king 🤴🏾 Patrice Lumumba*
Already looking forward for the video about the past of Africa!!
Thank you for the video, it explained so much to me :D
Austria actually comes from the german word east, not west
The text on the video says the same, but I don't know why he said "west".
I believe it's "Westereich" in German.
wilder wilder Westenreich aka: Bayern
As mentioned, I made an error in my narration, the text is correct, not sure how that happened. I can't even correct it because I've just gone on holiday! Sorry about the mistake.
SDC Smedly I hope you were just joking. Austria = Österreich in german. The german word for east is „ost“.
Zaire has a sick flag
But Zaire was change into Congo DR and flag is good to.
*Had.
Past tense.
@@triatic9476 Because Zaire does not exist anymore.
That country is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
But had a complete flip flop fruit loop loonatic extraordinaire in charge.
Thank you SO much for uploading videos on fresh content. Can't wait for the next one!
Awesome video! I recognised several concepts in this video as being covered in my Modern European History class (where we read King Leopold's Ghost, which I do recommend), and my Politics of Africa class, though there I focused on Tanzania. Really interesting continent with a rich cultural and political history :)
I am from Congo DRC i was born there and lived there for 22 years. And in my opinion, except for the river, i think it's mostly due to the fact that there KONGO kingdom that included the actual Angola, DRC, Congo-Brazzaville and a part of Gabon...
🇨🇩😍💪
Hi
Hey Glody. Thanks for confirming that. What you wrote is what I was able to deduce from this video, although the narrator made no such claim. It was called Congo because of the region the Congo Kingdom occupied prior to be divided up by the 'Euros'. And this pattern can later be seen in the video with the examples of Guinea, Guyana, and Niger/Nigeria in particular.
What a phenomenal video, so many people forget about how Mobutu came to power, and the impact of lumumbas assassination so thanks for including it
This is an amazing video, I’m quite into geography and history and all this information is pretty new for me, thanks so much for sharing! I especially liked the etymologies of Austria and Australia.
thanks for making this video. African history was often overlooked in my classes
I liked this shorter style a lot more honestly. Feels like more info in less time 😀
>Sees WonderWhy video in the recent uploads
>Interrupts everything
>Sees video
Thanks for explaining it to us. I've wondered about it a few times.
Thank you for a great video. Very informative and interesting. Please do more.
He's backkk!!!!!
Democratic republic of Congo: *exists*
King Leopold II:
Hippity hoppity, the DRC is *my* property
Commendable effort! I learned and learned even after three replays.
Seeing your first video. Loved it so much, want to see more like this
Who remembers when The DR of Congo was called Zaire? NOT ME I’m 17.
I worked on the Wembley Stadium industrial estate with a couple of guys from Zaire for while in the mid-90s. Nice chaps.
yes one of the first news reports I remember hearing and actually understanding in my life was that Zaire had run out of food
I'm 39, and I remember very well watching on TV in 1997 as the news was talking about how rebel troops were approaching the capital, but for now "the flag of Zaire was still flying." And then they showed it. :-)
I was born Zaïrian.
It’s killing me how close the Democratic Republic of Congo is to becoming landlocked. That little inch. (On the map scale)
Thanks for the information you blow my mind
Ahh! Good to see you again. Great video! See you two months later!
I like how you take quality over quantity
Actually the 'Aus-' root words are ultimately the same, going back to a Proto-Indo-European word meaning 'shine', particularly in reference to the dawn. Latin and German both wound up shifting the meaning from being the direction of dawn in the south-east to the cardinal directions, they just settled on difference ones.
Strangely the dawn appears more southerly in Germany than it does in Italy so you could argue they got it the wrong way around. But that's nothing compared to us here in Australia being named for being in the South because of something that, from our point of view, is in the North East.
Wow! I learned a lot in this short video. Thank you.
thank you for this informative video. great Job
The whole video was interesting...but I was fascinated to know about the color scheme of the majority of the flags of Africa. I pride myself on my knowledge of history and had no clue about that!
"near future"
YAY!!!
And by near future, we mean when Half-Life 3 comes out.
Marylandbrony :D
Great film (as with others). I love travelling and fascinated by the concept of international borders. I'm a Brit, living in Belgium and have visited Barl Hertog/Nassau.
What a wonderful channel. I am a huge fan of your work!
Wow, I'm from Congo Kinshasa and I didn't really know about this.
WonderWhy is here!
WonderWhy is James Bisonette confirmed
Edit: Wrong channel
Outstanding summary, thank you
Thanks, I learned a lot from this video, particularly were the pan-African colors come from.
Congo-Brazzers..
i'll make sure to remember that😂 😂 😂 😂
I follow Guinea-Bissau's (Bissau-Guinean) example and the adjective would be either Brazzaville-Congolese or just Brazza-Congolese (which I prefer).
*Suggestive saxophone music*
Fun fact: the 2 congos has the biggest eggplants in the world
Dulphe Seigfried T.U.C do they actually
@@msh3l518 yea one of the elephants is you
Wasn't there also in Belgium, a 'zoo' of Congolese people!?
R F That was at the world fair where they moved a Congolese village to the fair to show off to the rest of the world
@@jeswazwadi7049 There were no zoos for people in the USA
@@chaosXP3RT here is a quote "more than 20 million people attended the 1904 World’s Fair. They came to St. Louis to see electricity for the first time, to hear the first telephone, and to witness around 3,000 “savages” from Africa, Asia, and the Americas living in “displays” that resembled their native villages. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Western world was desperate to see the “savage,” “primitive” peoples described by explorers and adventurers scouting out new lands for colonial exploitation. To feed the frenzy, thousands of indigenous individuals from Africa, Asia, and the Americas were brought to the United States and Europe, often under dubious circumstances, to be put on display in a quasi-captive life in “human zoos.”
chaosXpert there were humans zoo and if you want a remind about rotten ideas. Remember, that till recently in USA, the eugenic ideology was prominent.
@@jeswazwadi7049 Looks like human cages been a thing since yore.
I was very curious about it . thank you!
Amazing video man. I which you posted more often!
I love how Brazzaville was actually democratic and Kinshasa was not. While neither are now, it's like someone flipped the names.
Usually if you see the term "Democratic" in a country's name, chances are it is the opposite. Another good example is North Korea (formally known as the DPRK - Democratic People's Republic of Korea).
Gameflyer001 The Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Princípe is one of the few cases where it's actually true.
@@DaisyGeekyTransGirl They should consider changing it to attract tourists :/
You are so wrong, Sassou Nguesso has been president for more than twl decates
Denis Sassou Ngwessou's régime is the elders after Eyadema of Togo. Did sassou transformed Democracy to Dictatorship as the real definition? MOST OF AFRICAN COUNTRIES Are lead by dictatorship expect South Africa but as eldest African party ANC
See you in 3 Months!
* Three years.
Still alive?
Thanx for clearing all confusion...
Always cool when you post a video
Unlike the other pairs of same-name countries divided by the Cold War (the Koreas, the Germanys), in the Congos the communist country became richer than the capitalist country.
David Harrison Very late reply, but as a matter of fact, the DRPK was actually much better off than the RoK until the 1980s where South Korea saw huge amounts of investment from the west
@@chelseacomps829 yup as always its the White Man pulling the third world out of poverty. Western production helped china out of poverty, Vietnam and Thailand with development money too, half of the middle east is veing built with western money, african countries receive billions in aid and donations from Western countries and western everyday working people. Chile has had massive investments too in south america. India and Pakistan seeing huge investments. Israel was built up with british and french and german reparation money. Yeah always the same shit
@@AbuHajarAlBugatti i mean considering western nations colonized the planet it makes why they are richer and dont forget 2 out of 3 largest economies are not white
Just in case if you're wondering what is the land between the coasts of the two countries, its actually an exclave of Angola 🇦🇴
I love you for making this video man.
Amazing research 👍🏾
Slovakia vs Slovenia
Slovania
Slovekia
Slo-slo
I'm guessing both are derived from the word "Slav", Slovenia gaining a more latinised suffix (it is next to Italy, afterall) and Slovakia a more... slavic one (many slavic names ending in -ak). The difference with the rest of the slavic countries being that these weren't named after a tribe (Serbs, Bulgars, Russ etc.) or a place (Montenegro, FYR Macedonia etc.)
I've alway asked myself if there is a connection between the word "slav" and the slavic words for "human". I only know the czech word for human which is "člověče". Could those two words be connected?
We all know that countrys with "democratic" in their name are the moooost democratic ^^ :D great videos dude, keep going on!
Love these vids, so interesting and I love your accent
Oh hey! Glad you’re back.
One Congo is higher pitched than the other. They sound lit in reggae music.
Couldn't help yourself by throwing a good old exclave in the video
Great video, I learned a lot. Thanks
Good video. Very informative.
I think it's cool the DRK named their capital after Shinsuke Nakamura's finisher!
bonecanoe86 KINSHHHHASSSSSSSAAAAAA
Out of curiosity where did you get those old African maps from?
*+*
+Opiniones de JACC's Opinions what
Thanks this was very informative
Well done as usual.👍🏻
King Leopold killed us and took everything to Belgian 😭😭😭 saddd
No it was other kongolese killing kongolese for Leopold. Blame your own people who love money over their own country
@@AbuHajarAlBugatti dumb comment
@@AbuHajarAlBugatti dumb ass
@@samuelmuzeze5498 Black people are allergic to taking responsibility
@@AbuHajarAlBugatti Use your brain and stop commenting stiped things.
Red green and yellow are used for pan-africanism
*lithuania*
SIKE
Myanmar: (laughing from Asia)
@@mr.bonkers2310 laughs in british
Absolutely brilliant 🏆
Great job with this video! Thank you ;)
Thanks for watching, see you again next year.
You could have also talked about what are the relations between the two countries. Do they like each other. Do they have similar ethnic groups and etc. I already now the answers but some people may not.
Боян Михов what are the answers? if you could explain it in a few sentences that would be nice
li ly Better watch Geography now they covered it up pretty well. Sorry I am just to lazy to write it down.
We speak the same native language we both speak Lingala and Kikongo. As we were both part of one kingdom and the majority ethnic group is the Bakongo tribe
This was an AWESOME video!! You did such a great job summarizing a breadth of information into an easily digested 7:22. That could not have been easy. Thank you so much and I can't wait for your video on the European colonization of Africa.
Side note: One question I've always had is how did Europeans chose the colony borders? Each West African nation that I'm familiar with has dozens of different ethnic groups and sometimes hundreds of languages. On top of that, the precolonial African kingdoms I'm aware don't always seems to align with the 19th century colonial division, so how was all of that decided upon? Thanks again.
Great video sir 👍👍👍
_If you have to make videos on _*_COLONIALISM_*_ [ By the way the topic is very interesting ;) ]_
_Can you make the videos like in a order given below - ( they are ranked alphabetically )_
1 ) *The BRITISH EMPIRE* 🇬🇧🇬🇧
2 ) *The Dutch Colonial Empire* 🇳🇱🇳🇱
3 ) *The French Empire* 🇫🇷🇫🇷
4 ) *The Portuguese Empire* 🇵🇹🇵🇹
5 ) *The Spanish Empire* 🇪🇸🇪🇸
I think they should be done in order of historical relevance by time. Portugese -> Spanish -> Dutch -> French -> British. This way it's easier to refer to past events.
The comments for those videos will be a cesspit
UIT DIE BLOU VAN ONSE HEMEL
But it would also be interresting to see all those attemps of small states like Norway, Sweden, Austria, Poland, Lithuania, smaller German countries,... that didn't last very long. Not to forget about Denmark, USA, Germany, Italy, with their colonies.
Onkel Jajus Bahn "Small states"? Poland-Lithuania, Sweden and Austria were powerhouses with a gigantic land areas in their respective golden ages.
Nkrumah never dies, never dies, never dies!
Nkrumah never dies - he forever lives!
thank you for showing the pictures. some people can't seem to understand what horrors happened in colonial times.
Excellent work!
The video brought up Ethiopia, so I was expecting the mention of Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea the European colonial past...
Congo:Who..are you?
DRC:I'm you, but stronger.
Zaire
I. LOVE. THE. NARRATOR'S. VOICE AND ACCENT!
😍😍😍
I love these videos that about super specific political complications in modern history but I wish you could do some about the Middle Ages such as the “War of the roses” or “the crusades”
Congo: Daniel
RDC: The cooler Daniel.
0:17 what about the Vatican and Italy?
Vatican City is a country
Awesome Duck I know
Probably considering just UN members.
1870-Pope in a huff.
1929-Treaty of Lateran? with Mussolini formalises the Vatican City.
Read the bottom left
Excelent video!!
Well done video.
I WonderWhy you don't upload more often
I WonderWhy you say this
LORD SANOGO WILL PREVEIL
Lord Sanogo Will Win The 2094 ballon d'Or ask troopz
XD
0:19 - Too bad it isn't West Congo and East Congo or Korea-Pyongyang and Korea-Seoul.
+Jacob Griffin
Well, in actuality North and South Korea don't officially recognize those designations, but also aren't against them. They both claim all of the Korean Peninsula and see the other as illegitimate, but to keep things simple everyone has just agreed to used cardinal directions to differentiate them. Most UN and international sources use their full official name when referring to them.
www.un.org/en/member-states/#gotoD
short or not, that video was awesome!
Excellent! Thank you.