The Kingdom of Kongo (Kongo: Kongo Dya Ntotila or Wene wa Kongo; Portuguese: Reino do Congo; Latin: Regnum Congo) was a kingdom in Central Africa. It was located in present-day northern Angola, the western portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, southern Gabon and the 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 kingdom consisted of several core provinces ruled by the Manikongo, the Portuguese version of the Kongo title Mwene Kongo, meaning "lord or ruler of the Kongo kingdom", and its sphere of influence extended to neighbouring kingdoms, such as Ngoyo, Kakongo, Loango, Ndongo, and Matamba, the latter two located in what became Angola.
From c. 1390 to 1862, it was an independent state. From 1862 to 1914, it functioned intermittently as a vassal state of the Kingdom of Portugal. In 1914, following the Portuguese suppression of a Kongo revolt, Portugal abolished the titular monarchy. The title of King of Kongo was restored from 1915 until 1975, as an honorific without real power. The remaining territories of the kingdom were assimilated into the colony of Portuguese Angola and the Independent State of the Congo respectively. The modern-day Bundu dia Kongo sect favours reviving the kingdom through secession from Angola, the Republic of the Congo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
History
Oral traditions about the early history of the country were set in writing for the first time in the late 16th century. Especially detailed versions were recorded in the mid-17th century, which include those written by the Italian Capuchin missionary Giovanni Cavazzi da Montecuccolo. Traditions about the foundation changed over time, depending on historical circumstances.
Modern research into oral tradition, including recording them in writing began in the 1910s with Mpetelo Boka and Lievan Sakala Boku writing in KiKongo, and extended by Redemptorist missionaries like Jean Cuvelier and Joséph de Munck. In 1934, Cuvelier published a KiKongo language summary of these traditions in Nkutama a mvila za makanda. Although Cuvelier and other scholars contended that these traditions applied to the earliest period of Kongo's history, it is more likely that they relate primarily to local traditions of clans (makanda) and especially to the period following 1750.
Foundation
By the 13th century there were three main federations of states in the western Congo Basin. In the east were the Seven Kingdoms of Kongo dia Nlaza, considered to be the oldest and most powerful, which likely included Nsundi, Mbata, Mpangu, and possibly Kundi and Okanga. South of these was Mpemba. It included various kingdoms such as Mpemba Kasi and Vunda. To its west across the Congo River was a confederation of three small states; Vungu (its leader), Kakongo, and Ngoyo.
According to Kongo tradition in the seventeenth century, the kingdom's origin was in Vungu, which had extended its authority across the Congo to Mpemba Kasi, which was itself the northernmost territory of Mpemba, whose capital was located about 150 miles south. A dynasty of rulers from this small polity built up its rule along the Kwilu Valley, or what was called Nsi a Kwilu, and its elite are buried near its centre. Traditions from the 17th century allude to this sacred burial ground. According to the missionary Girolamo da Montesarchio, an Italian Capuchin who visited the area from 1650 to 1652, the site was so holy that looking upon it was deadly. These rocks may be the rugged uplands of Lovo where there is extensive cave and rock art that dates from at least the fifteenth century.
The Kingdom of Kongo was founded around 1390 through the political marriage between the two KiKongo speaking peoples; Nima a Nzima, ruler of the Mpemba Kasi and Vungu, and Lukeni lua Nsanze ("Luqueni Luansanze"), daughter of Nsaku lau, the ruler of the neighbouring Mbata Kingdom. At some point around 1375, Nimi a Nzima started this alliance with Nsaku lau. This marital alliance guaranteed that each of the two allies would help ensure the succession of its ally's lineage in the other's territory. Mbata in turn was a former province of the Seven Kingdoms of Kongo dia Nlaza, whose capital lay farther east along the current border of Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo. Mbata may have been the senior partner in the original alliance, as he had the title of "Nkaka andi a Mwene Kongo," or grandfather of the king of Kongo.
Nimi a Nzima and Lukeni lua Nsanze's son, Lukeni lua Nimi (circa 1380–1420), began the expansion that would found the Kingdom of Kongo. Lukeni lua Nimi led expansion southward into lands ruled by Mpemba. He established a new base on the mountain Mongo dia Kongo and made alliances with the Mwene Mpangala, ruler of a market town then loyal to Mpemba and also with the Mwene Kabunga whose lands lay west of there of uncertain loyalty and the site of a shrine. Two centuries later the Mwene Kabunga's descendants still symbolically challenged the conquest in an annual celebration. He furthered this with a second more important alliance with Vunda, another of Mpemba's subordinate rulers. To cement this alliance, as with the one with Mbata, Lukeni lua Nimi allowed him to be an elector to the kingdom.
After the death of Lukeni lua Nimi, the rulers that followed Lukeni claimed relation to his kanda (lineage), and were known as the Kilukeni. The Kilukeni kanda — or "house", as it was recorded in Portuguese language documents written in Kongo — ruled Kongo unopposed until 1567.
Expansion and early development
The 16th-century tradition said that the former kingdoms "in ancient times had separate kings, but now all are subjects and tributaries of the king of Congo." Tradition noted that in each case the governorship was given to members of the royal family or other noble families. Governors who served terms determined by the king had the right to appoint their own clients to lower positions, down to villages who had their own locally chosen leadership. As this centralisation increased, the allied provinces gradually lost influence until their powers were only symbolic, manifested in Mbata, once a co-kingdom, and by 1620 simply known by the title "Grandfather of the King of Kongo" (Nkaka'ndi a Mwene Kongo).
The kingdom of the Kongo's early campaigns of expansion brought new populations under the kingdom's control and produced many war captives. Starting in the 14th century (and reaching its height in the 17th century), the kings of the Kongo forcibly relocated captured peoples to the royal capital at M'banza-Kongo. The resulting high concentration of population around M'banza-Kongo and its outskirts played a critical role in the centralisation of Kongo. The capital was a densely settled area in an otherwise sparsely populated region where rural population densities probably did not exceed 5 persons per km2. Early Portuguese travellers described M'banza-Kongo as a large city, the size of the Portuguese town of Évora as it was in 1491. By the end of the sixteenth century, Kongo's population was probably over half a million people in a core region of some 130,000 square kilometres. By the early seventeenth century the city and its hinterland had a population of around 100,000, or nearly one out of every six inhabitants in the Kingdom (according to baptismal statistics compiled by a Jesuit priest in 1623), while the kingdom as a whole numbered some 780,000.
The concentration of population, economic activity, and political power in M'banza-Kongo strengthened the Kongolese monarchy and allowed for a centralised government. Captives taken in war were enslaved and integrated into the local population, producing a food and labour surplus, while rural regions of the kingdom paid taxes in the form of goods the capital could not produce itself. A class of urban nobility developed in the capital, and their demand for positions at court and consumer goods fuelled the kingdom's economy. Rural development was intentionally discouraged by the Kongolese king, ensuring the capital remained the economic and political centre of the kingdom. This concentration allowed resources, soldiers and surplus foodstuffs to be readily available at the request of the king and made the king overwhelmingly powerful when compared to any potential rival.
Contact with Portugal and Christianisation
In 1483, the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão reached the coast of the Kongo Kingdom. Cão left some of his men in Kongo and took Kongo nobles to Portugal. He returned to Kongo with the Kongo nobles in 1485; such commissioning, hiring, or even kidnapping of local Africans to use as local ambassadors, especially for newly contacted areas, was by then an already established practice. At that point the ruling king, Nzinga a Nkuwu, decided he would become Christian and sent another, large mission headed by Kala ka Mfusu, the noble who had earlier gone to Portugal as a hostage. They remained in Europe for nearly four years, studying Christianity and learning reading and writing. The mission returned with Cão, who was accompanied with Catholic priests and soldiers in 1491, baptising Nzinga a Nkuwu, who took the Christian name of João I in honour of Portugal's king at the time, João II. Moreover, the king's principal nobles. starting with the ruler of Soyo, the coastal province, were baptised as well.
However, one of the key obstacles in this conversion was the issue of monogamy. While Catholic writers saw Kongolese resistance to this as grounded in lust and sin, the reasons for resistance were in fact, fundamental to Kongolese social structure. Ann Hilton notes that polygamy was deeply embedded in the system of state formation through marriage and household alliances of the kanda. Thus, tampering with polygamy threatened to de-stabilise the social and political world of Kongo. Therefore, upon the death of João I in 1506, a conflict arose between conservatives who preferred the Kongolese faith and the Catholic bloc led by Afonso I. After Afonso's triumph against his half brother, Mpanzu a Kitima, in 1509, Catholicism became the state cult for the ruling Mwissikongo.
According to Afonso's own account, he was able to win the battle thanks to the intervention of a heavenly vision of the cross of Saint James and the Virgin Mary. Inspired by these events, he subsequently designed a coat of arms for Kongo that was used by all following kings on official documents, royal paraphernalia and the like until 1860.
Reign of Afonso I
Upon his ascension as king in 1509, Afonso I worked to create a viable version of the Catholic Church in Kongo, providing for its income from royal assets and taxation that provided salaries for its workers. With advisers from Portugal such as Rui d'Aguiar, the Portuguese royal chaplain sent to assist Kongo's religious development, Afonso created a syncretic version of Christianity that would remain a part of its culture for the rest of the kingdom's independent existence. King Afonso himself studied hard at this task. Rui d'Aguiar once said Afonso I knew more of the church's tenets than he did.
The Kongo church was always short of ordained clergy and made up for it by the employment of a strong laity. Kongolese school teachers or mestres (KiKongo alongi a aleke) were the anchor of this system. Recruited from the nobility and trained in the kingdom's schools, they provided religious instruction and services to others building upon Kongo's growing Christian population. At the same time, they permitted the growth of syncretic forms of Christianity which incorporated older religious ideas with Christian ones. Examples of this are the introduction of KiKongo words to translate Christian concepts. The KiKongo words ukisi (an abstract word meaning charm, which used to mean "holy") and nkanda (meaning book) were merged so that the Christian Bible became known as the nkanda ukisi (holy book). The church became known as the nzo a ukisi (holy house). Some European clergy denounced these mixed traditions without being able to root them out.
Part of the establishment of this church was the creation of a strong priesthood and to this end, Afonso's son Henrique was sent to Europe to be educated. Henrique became an ordained priest and in 1518 was named as titular bishop of Utica (a North African diocese recently reclaimed from the Muslims). He returned to Kongo in the early 1520s to run Kongo's new church. He died in 1531.
Expansion of the slave trade
Slavery had existed since the Kingdom of Kongo's founding, as during its early wars of expansion the nascent kingdom had taken many captives. Kongo's tradition of forcibly transferring peoples captured in wars to the royal capital was key to the power of the Kongolese king, and it was the same mechanism of enslavement and transfer of population that made Kongo an efficient exporter of slaves. Kongolese laws and cultural traditions protected freeborn Kongolese from enslavement, and so most of the enslaved population were war captives. Convicted Kongolese criminals could also be forced into slavery, and were initially protected from sale outside the kingdom. The export of female slaves was also prohibited. Afonso's early letters show evidence of domestic slave markets.