Kingdom of Kongo

Foundation

Kongo oral traditions tell of a kingdom founded at the end of the 14th century, when the leaders Nimi a Nzima and Nsaku Lau allied; Nimi a Nzima's son Lukeni lua Nimi became the first king and made Mbanza Kongo his capital. The town stood on a plateau in what is now northern Angola. Kongo grew into the largest centralised state in Central Africa, with a king who appointed regional governors and was advised by a council of senior nobles. Its economy drew on farming, raffia cloth weaving, copper, salt and ivory, and it used nzimbu shells gathered on Luanda Island as currency.

Portugal and Christianity

Portuguese ships under Diogo Cão reached the Congo estuary in 1483. Relations began as trade and diplomacy, and in 1491 King Nzinga a Nkuwu was baptised as João I. His successor Afonso I (Nzinga Mbemba) promoted Christianity, read and wrote Portuguese and sent young nobles to study in Europe; his son Henrique was made a bishop in 1518. Christianity in Kongo kept many local customs, and Kongo artists made brass crucifixes blending European and local styles. UNESCO notes that Kongo sent the first ambassador from a sub-Saharan African state accredited at the Vatican, in 1608, and that the first catechism in Kikongo was written at Mbanza Kongo in 1624. The Portuguese renamed the capital São Salvador.

The slave trade

Portuguese sugar plantations on São Tomé created rising demand for captives. Afonso I sought to keep the trade under royal control and resisted Portuguese settlement. In a 1526 letter to João III of Portugal, one of a series he wrote, he complained that merchants were kidnapping free people, nobles and even his own relatives, and asked that the trade be stopped. It continued, and raids to supply it contributed to the Jaga wars of the 1560s, after which Kongo relied on Portuguese help and lost some of its independence.

Wars and decline

Kongo still defended itself: King Pedro II's forces defeated a Portuguese invasion in 1623, and Kongo supported the Dutch seizure of Luanda in 1641. In 1665, however, Kongo suffered a heavy defeat by Portuguese-led forces at Mbwila, a blow from which the kingdom did not recover. Rival claimants fought a long civil war, and São Salvador was sacked and abandoned in 1678. By about 1710 Kongo had lost full independence, although kings continued to hold the title into the 19th century. After the Berlin Conference of 1885, European powers occupied the interior, and the old kingdom's lands were absorbed into Portuguese Angola in the early 20th century.

Legacy

Mbanza Kongo, with the remains of the former cathedral known locally as Kulumbimbi, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2017, recognised for its role as a gateway for Christianity into Central Africa.