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Revision as of 19:03, 5 December 2005 by 128.197.186.62 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)The Kongo Kingdom was an African kingdom located in southwest Africa in what are now northern Angola, Cabinda, Republic of the Congo, and the western portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At its greatest extent, it reached from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Kwango River in the east, and from the Congo River in the north to the Kwanza River in the south. The empire consisted of several core provinces ruled by a monarch, the Manikongo (sixteenth century spelling of 'Mwene Kongo) of the Bakongo (Kongo peoples, also known as the Essikongo), but its sphere of influence extended to the neighboring states such as Ngoyo, Kakongo, Ndongo and Matamba as well.
Foundation of the empire
Before the arrival of the Europeans, the Kongo Kingdom was a highly developed state at the center of an extensive trading network. Apart from natural resources and ivory, the country manufactured and traded copperware, ferrous metal goods, raffia cloth, and pottery. The Kongo people spoke in the Kongo language. The eastern regions, especially that part known as the Seven Kingdoms of Kongo dia Nlaza (or in Kikongo Mumbwadi or "the Seven") was particularly famous for the production of cloth. The Kingdom, according to oral traditions set to writing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was founded by Lukeni lua Nimi, heir to an alliance between the neighboring small kingdoms of Mpemba Kasi and Mbata, probably in the late fourteenth century. According to the terms of this agreement, the rulers of each kingdom would guarantee succession in the other kingdom within the same family. In the case of the Mbata kingdom it ensured the throne's inheritance by Nsaku Lau's descendants, and in Kongo's by descendants of Nimi a Nzima, Lukeni lua Nimi's father.
Lukeni lua Nimi founded a new capital, according to tradition, at the mountain top town of Mbanza Kongo (Kongo for 'City of Kongo') around 1400. He and his successor gradually added other provinces to the kingdom, some such as Mpemba were annexed voluntarily, others such as Nsundi and Mbamba were conquered. By the early sixteenth century, the kings of Kongo had the right to appoint and dismiss the governors of the provinces that they had conquered, or to approve or reject officials proposed by rulers of the provinces that had joined voluntarily. This latter group included Mbata through the terms of their ancient alliance. The Mwene Kongos often gave the governorships to members of their family or its clients. Though Mbata continued to exercise some power in the choice of the monarch, its influence gradually sank in the following years to the level of other provinces.
A critical element in the centralization of Kongo was the high concentration of the populace around Mbanza Kongo and its outskirts, which was also in an otherwise sparsely populated region. Early Portuguese travelers described Mbanza Kongo as a large city, the size of the Portuguese town of Évora as it was in 1491. By the early seventeenth century the city and its hinterland had a population of around 100,000, or one out of every five inhabitants in the Kingdom (according to baptismal statistics compiled by Jesuit priests). This concentration allowed resources, soldiers and surplus foodstuffs to be readily available at the request of the king. This made the king overwhelmingly powerful and caused the kingdom to become highly centralized.
The arrival of the Portuguese
In his travels along the African coast between 1482 and 1483., Portuguese navigator Diogo Cão first encountered the powerful kingdom on the coast. During his visit, Cão left his men in Kongo while also kidnapping Kongo nobles to Portugal, only to return with the Kongo hostages in 1485. At that point the ruling king, Nzinga Nkuwu agreed to become a Christian, and Catholic priests arrived in 1491 to baptize the king as well as his principal nobles, starting with the ruler of Soyo (the coastal province). At the same time a literate Kongo citizen returning from Portugal opened the first school. Nzinga Nkuwu took the name of João in honor of the king of Portugal at the time João II.
João I ruled until his death around 1509 and was succeeded by his son Afonso Mvemba a Nzinga. Afonso faced a serious challenge from a half brother Mpanzu a Kitima, but he overcame his brother in a battle waged at Mbanza Kongo. According to Afonso's own account,sent to Portugal in 1509, he was able to win the battle thanks to the intervention of a heavenly vision of Saint James and the Virgin Mary. Inspired by these events, he subsequently designed a coat of arms for Kongo which was used by all following kings on official documents, royal paraphenalia and the like until 1860.
In the following decades, the Kongo Kingdom became a major source of slaves for traders from Portugal and other European powers. Slavery had existed in Kongo long before the arrival of the Portuguese, and Afonso's early letters show the evidence of slave markets, the purchase and sale of slaves within the country, and also his accounts on capturing slaves in war which were given and sold to Portuguese merchants. However, Afonso believed that the slave trade must be subject to Kongo law and when he suspected Portuguese of receiving illegally enslaved persons to sell, he wrote in 1526 to King João of Portugal, imploring him to put a stop to the practice. Ultimately, Afonso decided to establish a special committee to determine the legality of the enslavement of those who were being sold.
One aspect of centralized power in Kongo was the presence of fierce competition over the succession to the throne. Afonso's own contest for the throne was intense, though little is known about it. However, a great deal is known about how such struggles took place from the contest that followed Afonso's death in late 1542 or early 1543, thanks to a detailed inquest conducted into it by royal officials in 1550. In this inquest one can see that factions formed behind prominent men, such as Pedro, Afonso's son and first successor, and Diogo, his grandson who ultimately overthrew Pedro and was crowned in 1545. Although the factions declared themselves in the idiom of kinship (using the Portuguese term geração or lineage) they were not formed strictly by hereditary, as close kin were often in separate factions. The players included nobles holding appointative titles to provincial governorships, members of the royal council and also offcials in the now well developed Church hierarchy. Diogo skillfully replaced or maneuvered these actors and kicked off a long reign that ended with his death in 1561.
Kongo's apogee
King Álvaro I, came to the throne in an environment of contestation in 1568, was not the biological son of his father Henrique, but rather the son of Henrique's wife by a previous husband. There were certainly factions that opposed him, though it is not know specifically who they were. Álvaro immediately had to fight invaders from the east (who some authorities believe were actually rebels within the country, either peasants or discontented nobles, perhaps of the rival factions) called the "Jagas". To do this, he decided to enlist the aid of the Portuguese based at São Tomé, who sent an expedition under Francisco de Gouveia Sottomaior to assist. As a part of the same process, Álvaro agreed to allow the Portuguese to establish a colony in his province of Luanda in the south of his country. In addition to allowing the Portuguese to establish themselves in Luanda, Kongo provided the Portuguese with support in their war against the Kingdom of Ndongo, located in the interior east of Luanda, when Portugual went to war with it in 1579.
Álvaro also worked hard to westernize Kongo, gradually introducing European style titles for his nobles, so that the Mwene Nsundi became the Duke of Nsundi, the Mwene Mbamba the Duke of Mpamba or the Mwene Mpemba,the Marquis of Mpemba, and the Mwene Soyo the Count of Soyo. He and his son Alvaro II began an order of chivalry, the Order of Christ, and renamed the capital city São Salvador or "Holy Savior" in Portuguese. In 1596, after intense diplomatic activity, São Salvador was named an episcopal see by the Pope and the colony of Angola was placed under it. However, Portugal won the right to nominate the bishops to this see, which would be the source of tension between the two countries.
Álvaro I and his son and successor Álvaro II (1587-1614) also faced problems with factional rivals. In order to raise support against some enemies they had to make concessions to others, and one of the most important of these was allowing Manuel, the Mwene Soyo (renamed the Count of Soyo in Álvaro's renomination of officials) to hold office for many years, beginning sometime before 1591.
Tensions between Portugal and Kongo increased even more as the governors of Portuguese Angola became more aggressive. Luis Mendes de Vasconcelos, who arrived as governor in 1617, used mercenary African groups called Imbangala to make a devastating war on Ndongo, and then to raid and pillage some southern Kongo provinces. His successor Joao Correia de Sousa used them to launch a full scale invasion of southern Kongo in 1622, culminating in the battle of Mbumbi in November of that year in which several Kongo nobles were killed. Pedro II, king of Kongo at that point now declared Angola an official enemy, and sent a letter to the Dutch Estates General proposing a joint military attack on Angola, with a Kongo army and a Dutch fleet. He would pay the Dutch with gold, silver and ivory for their efforts. Indeed, a Dutch fleet under the command of the celebrated admiral Piet Heyn arrive in Luanda to carry out its attack in 1624, but at that point, Pedro had died and his son Garcia I was unwilling to contiuing pursuing attacks on Angola.
In this period there was increasing political struggle within Kongo, as rival factions ousted each other from kingship. Two houses, the House of Kwilu which counted most of the kings named Álvaro, held office but was forced by rivals to vest the kingship in a second royal branch, the House of Nsundi when Pedro II was elected king in 1622. Either Pedro or Garcia I, his son and successor (1624-31) managed to secure Soyo in the hands of Count Paulo, who held it and supported the House of Nsundi from about 1625 until 1641. Paulo played an important role in the civil war that matched two brothers Álvaro and Garcia (members of a new house) against partisans of the House of Nsundi. As a result of these wars, Álvaro was crowned as Álvaro VI in 1636, and following his death in 1641 his brother Garcia took over.
However, as Garcia took the throne, one of his rivals, Daniel da Silva, managed to secure the County of Soyo and would use it as a base against Garcia for the whole of his reign, preventing him from completely consolidating his authority. Garcia waged several wars against Soyo but was unsuccessful, and these wars greatly hampered his ability to fight the Portuguese when the Dutch, acting on the agreement that Pedro II had originally proposed in 1622, siezed Luanda from the Portuguese in 1641. Both Daniel da Silva and Garcia sent embassies to the Netherlands, which wished to stay neutral, and Garica was never able to make a full committment of his forces in the war against Portugal, which ended when the Portuguese recaptured Luanda in 1648.
Portuguese take-over
At the Battle of Ambuila in 1665, the Portuguese forces from Angola defeated the forces of king Antonio I of Kongo; Antonio was killed with many of his courtiers and the Luso-African Capuchin priest Manuel Roboredo (also known by his cloister name of Francisco de Sao Salvador), who had attempted to prevent this final war. Nevertheless, the country continued to exist, at least in name, for over two centuries, until the realm was divided among Portugal, Belgium, and France at the Conference of Berlin in 1884-1885.
- See also: List of Manikongo of Kongo