Kongo Kingdom Pdf

[Orestes Hardy]

TheKingdom of Kongo (Kongo: Kongo Dya Ntotila[6][7][8] or Wene wa Kongo;[9] Portuguese: Reino do 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,[10] Southern of Gabon and the Republic of the Congo.[11] 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", but its sphere of influence extended to neighbouring kingdoms, such as Ngoyo, Kakongo, Loango, Ndongo, and Matamba, the latter two located in what is Angola today.[5]

Oral traditions about the early history of the country were set in writing for the first time in the late 16th century, and especially detailed versions were recorded in the mid-17th century, include those written by the Italian Capuchin missionary Giovanni Cavazzi da Montecuccolo.[16] 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 Joseph de Munck. In 1934, Cuvelier published a Kikongo language summary of these traditions in Nkutama a mvila za makanda.[17] 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.[18][19]

Before the founding of Kongo, the region it would eventually control was under the control of several minor kingdoms, according to a tradition recorded in the mid-1580s. It named several former kingdoms, which were included in Kongo: Nsundi, Mpangu, and Mbata, along the Inkisi on the east; and Wandu south of them. Then Mpemba in the center, and Soyo and Mbamba on the seacoast south of the Congo River.[20][21]

According to Kongo tradition in the seventeenth century, the kingdom's origin was in Vungu, a small polity which lay north of the Congo River, and which had extended its authority across the Congo to Mpemba Kasi, which was itself the northernmost territory of a larger kingdom called 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 center. 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.[17] 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.[22][23]

At some point around 1375, Nimi a Nzima, ruler of Mpemba Kasi and Vungu, made an alliance with Nsaku Lau, the ruler of the neighboring Mbata Kingdom. Nimi a Nzima married Lukeni lua Nsanze (Luqueni Luansanze in the text), Nsaku Lau's daughter.[17][24] This 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.[25]

The 16th-century tradition contended that the former kingdoms "in ancient times had separate kings, but now all are subjects and tributaries of the king of Congo."[20] Tradition noted that in each case the governorship was given to members of the royal family or other noble families.[20] 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.[27] As this centralization increased, the allied provinces gradually lost influence until their powers were only symbolic, manifested in Mbata, once a co-kingdom, but by 1620 simply known by the title "Grandfather of the King of Kongo" (Nkaka'ndi a Mwene Kongo).[17][28]

The kingdom of the Kongo's early campaigns of expansion brought new populations under the kingdom's control and produced many war captives.[29][30] 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 Mbanza Kongo. The resulting high concentration of population around Mbanza Kongo and its outskirts played a critical role in the centralization 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 travelers described Mbanza Kongo as a large city, the size of the Portuguese town of vora 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 kilometers. 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.[31]

The concentration of population, economic activity, and political power in Mbanza Kongo strengthened the Kongolese monarchy and allowed for a centralized government. Captives taken in war were enslaved and integrated into the local population, producing a food and labor 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 fueled the kingdom's economy. Rural development was intentionally discouraged by the Kongolese king,[30] ensuring the capital remained the economic and political center 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.[31][30]

By the time of the first recorded contact with the Europeans, the Kingdom of Kongo was sited at the centre 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 Kikongo language. The eastern regions, especially that part known as the Seven Kingdoms of Kongo dia Nlaza, were particularly famous for the production of cloth.

In 1483, the Portuguese explorer Diogo Co reached the coast of the Kongo Kingdom.[32] Co 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.[33] 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.[34] The mission returned with Co along with Catholic priests and soldiers in 1491, baptizing Nzinga a Nkuwu as well as his principal nobles, starting with the ruler of Soyo, the coastal province. Nzinga a Nkuwu took the Christian name of Joo I in honor of Portugal's king at the time, Joo II.[35]

Joo I ruled until his death around 1509 and was succeeded by his son Afonso Mvemba a Nzinga. He faced a serious challenge from a half brother, Mpanzu a Kitima. The king overcame his brother in a battle waged at Mbanza Kongo. According to Afonso's own account, sent to Portugal in 1506, he was able to win the battle thanks to the intervention of a heavenly vision of the cross 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.[36] While King Joo I later reverted to his traditional beliefs, Afonso I established Christianity as the state religion of his kingdom.[35]

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, but 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). While some European clergy often denounced these mixed traditions, they were never able to root them out.[37]

3a8082e126