ABSTRACT
The climatic and vegetative zones of the Central African Republic virtually recapitulate those of the entire continent. All of Africa's climatic zones except the desert and Mediterranean belts are found stretched across Central Africa in horizontal bands. The Central Africans have suffered more than most other African peoples from the neglect, exploitation, and Europe-first orientation of the colonial policies. To date none of the governments of the Central African Republic has been able to overcome the consequences of a relatively sparse population. Contemporary research supports a de-emphasis of ethnographical preoccupations that caused most French administrators during the colonial period to attempt to separate Central Africans into fixed ethnic groups. Most Central Africans live within an often disruptive but still persisting communitarian, lineage-based economic and political system. They can be mobilized to collective action by the country's small bureaucratic bourgeoisie for its ends by the "ethnicization" of deprivation or perceived threats.
