The Kongo Kingdom

Despite M’banza Congo’s current feel of a large village, It was once the center of an impressive Central African empire. Since I haven’t been very inspired to write lately, I’m going to subject you to a little encyclopeadia reading.

Early Portuguese travelers described M’banza Kongo as a large city. By the early seventeenth century the city and its hinterland had a population of around 100,000. By the time of the first recorded contact with the Europeans, the Kingdom of Kongo was a highly developed state at the center of an extensive trading network.

In 1483, the Portuguese began a long-term relationship with the Kongo Kingdom. Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão sailed via the Atlantic Ocean down into the mouth of the Congo River. Upon reaching the Kongo Kingdom, he took Kongo emissaries back with him to Portugal, who later returned to Africa with European soldiers, priests, and goods. This was the beginning of a strong trade relationship with the Kongo that exported slaves and ivory in exchange for European luxury goods and guns.

In the case of the Kongo Kingdom, a form of slavery existed prior to Portuguese contact, which the Portuguese tapped into. However, the Portuguese had a dramatic impact on the Kongo Kingdom through pressure to increase raids of neighboring peoples to capture for the Atlantic Slave Trade and the exportation of large numbers of Kongolese over many years. The Atlantic Slave Trade fueled violence in the region, removed productive workers from the Kongo, and encouraged an economy built around slavery. Over time, the Kongo Kingdom became weaker and more dependent on Portuguese assistance.

Kikongo (the local language) was spoken by many Africans from the region who were taken into slavery and sold to the Americas. For this reason, while Kikongo still is spoken in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo and Angola, Creolized forms of the language are found in ritual speech of African derived religions in Brazil, Jamaica and Cuba.