« Ground floor: the new provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo: Territorial construction and ethnicities. To that addresses the topic of state in Africa, the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo 1ne can hardly be avoided, because of the importance of the country, he has known heartbreak, political reconstruction that undertakes. For in 2006, after nine years of civil war, foreign invasions, exoduses, massacres, looting, President Joseph Kabila (sucesseur of his father, assassinated in 2001) promulgated the Constitution of laTroisièmeRépublique. This text establishes a "highly decentralized unitary state", with 26 autonomous provinces; and a democratic system with a freely elected president and the national, provincial and local representatives, which had not seen here for forty years. Viewed more closely, the document, resulting from long negotiations conducted within the framework of the "transition" and "national reconciliation »

"At first, the state allocates its endistrictsassez Leopoldian fuzzy area (11 in 1888, 15 in 1895). Then, with the introduction of true colonial system, supervision of space and men is growing gradually, in particular to freeze the old mobility of the territorialisant ethnic groups. In 1914, the Belgian Congo was restructured into 4 grandesprovinces, Congo Kasai, Equateur, Orientale and Katanga. Getting articulate the 22 districts Existing divided enterritoires, themselves subdivided ensecteurs These include the multitude deschefferies, agglutinated for smaller changes in Table XIXèmesiècle when the noose tightens interference came from overseas.. the future is Congo partagéde factoentre deuxmouvances, Luso-africaineà west, facing the Americas, Arab-Swahili in the east, facing the Middle East. The shock of the old kingdoms then leaves the field to unprecedented powers, based on Slave: Ngongo-Lutete Kasai, Tippu Tip Maniema, Katanga Msiri.It is this space reorganization that will be, for the first time, unified politically in the context of the Congo Free State, in fact the personal property of King Leopold II of the Belgians.After Leopoldian period relatively short (1885-1908), that of the actual Belgian colonization (1908-1960) will be decisive for the establishment of a functional diagram still legible today.The model remains peripheral and extroverted, opposing lacuvette centraledéprimée utileoù a kind of ring is deployed fully the "development" colonial.But the integration of the Congolese space provided by the gradual creation of a powerful circulatory system, the will also by a territorial network increasingly tight, coercive and efficient (Bruneau, 1991).Our intention is to question the territorial rearrangement announced that attempts to separate the fire by providing a legal response to the crisis of national unity (Melmoth, 2007).The geopolitical implications are also external: the DRC, with its 2,345,000 km2, and at least 64 million people now 2, is by its size, its natural and human potential, its location, a major strategic element.But these strengths well arouse envy: once important issue of the East-West confrontation, butchered yesterday by his neighbors and their local minions, returned to a precarious peace, the Congo has been described by some as too vast space and various, ungovernable, "necessarily" doomed to some form of institutional fragmentation.And indeed, throughout the recent conflicts, it is a situation of autonomy (and cash) of factoqui had moved into areas held by various militias (in Ituri and Kivu in particular).The 2006 Constitution she will or not to regulate these centrifugal tendencies and reconstruct the country together?Congo and its territories: over a century of redials.In any case, the established administrative redistricting is not a first, since territorial fission was an ongoing process throughout the 125 years of political existence of the Congo.To clarify this situation, we chose to question what happened before proposing as one of the issues and evidence an analytical framework based on ethnorégionale architecture of the country.Initiated in the Congolese area since the dawn of humanity, the human grip it is enhanced with the expansion of Bantu peoples, there are more than two thousand years.Much later, in XVèmesiècle, Central Africa ordered an ecological type of partition.In the dense forest of the bowl, the Bantu rural societies remained scattered and segmented by customer relationship with Pygmy hunter-gatherers.In the clear forests and savannah of the perimeter, they structuraient more or less vast kingdoms: those south of Kongo, Yaka, Luba, or Lunda empire;kingdoms east of the Great Lakes, such as Rwanda;north, kingdoms (non-Bantu) and the Zande Mangbetu.rival warlords converted into senior officials of the country;crowd of ideological political parties also blurred their base is clearly ethnorégionale;Christian Churches;Finally, civil society, especially urban and that is supported by strong diasporas in Europe and North America.A feeling of "déjà vu" is needed at the symbols of the state, be it the name of the hymn, inherited from laPremière Republic (thus the lumumbisme), or coat of arms, motto and even the flag, borrowed laSeconde Republic (so to Mobutu).The organization of power is almost a carbon copy of that of 1960: the choice is clear and between presidential system and Assembly plan, nor between State and centralized federalism dual ambiguity which already made the country implode within months after independence."