In 1977 a man crowned himself Emperor of Central Africa. And France paid for it. In this episode, we break down the story behind it.

Jean-Bédel Bokassa was six years old when a French concession company beat his father to death in a town square. One week later his mother took her own life. The same country that did this then educated him, named him, and gave him twenty-two years in its army.

Part one takes him from the Lobaye basin to the French colonial army, through the coup of 1966, the Napoleon obsession, the diamonds and hunting concessions that bound him to Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the uranium, and the deal in which France agreed to pay for an imperial coronation in one of the poorest countries on earth.

Main Source: Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa by Brian Titley

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