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Kingdom of Kongo: Nation Formation
The Kingdom of the Kongo, also known as Kongo dya Ntotila, is by far one of the most famous kingdoms in sub-Saharan Africa. Located in the southwest section of Africa, it is now northern Angola, Cabinda, the Republic of the Congo and the western part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Once a great colossus, it seems that the Kongo Kingdom came and went so fast. John K. Thornton, author of “The Kingdom of Kongo” and “The Origins and Early History of the Kingdom of Kongo”, gives vivid detail and insight to the Kongo Kingdom. He stresses that the societal creation of the Kongo was dominated by a single mode of production whose establishment and dissolution defined the beginning and ending of the period (The Kingdom). He wrote that “Its [Kingdom of Kongo] inception, in about 1390, was central to the constitution of the social formation of the Kongo, while the complex activity between its various levels and relations led to its eventual destruction and break-up of the social formation after 1678…” (Thornton, the Kingdom).
In the 1480s, an explorer from Portuguese, Diogo Cao, happened to come across the Kongo Kingdom in his search for trade routes to Asia. And not long after he arrived in the Kingdom, explorers, missionaries and merchants followed suit. At first, it seemed as if they initially had a mutual attraction with each other. The Portuguese were looked at and reverenced as honorable and were welcomed at Mbanza, the capital (africafederation). The Portuguese found a primitive civilization in the Kongo, but they were not savages. Still, the Portuguese formed a very good relationship with the King, manikongo. The King of Kongo was treated with the utmost respect from the very beginning. The Portuguese soon gained converts and the soldiers helped the manikongo defeat an internal rebellion. King Nzinga Nkuwu saw the potential of the science brought to the Kongo by the Portuguese and sent an emissary to Portugal and allowed missionaries into the Kongo. Well, soon afterwards, the people from Kongo altered their way of living. In actuality, it was the Kongo leaders that were targeted for conversion by Christian missionaries. Eventually, a stone church was built and the King of Kongo was baptized and they followed suit with many Portuguese traditions (africafederation).
As I mentioned earlier, written record of the history of the Kingdom of Kongo are minimal. It wasn’t until after the arrival of the Portuguese in the late 1400s that the history and civilization of Central and Eastern Africa was recorded (africafederation). It is debated rather or not the Portuguese destroyed the Kongo Kingdom in the sixteenth century. In “Kingdom of the Kongo”, a study by Anne Hilton, she explains that the Kingdom of Kongo progressed in the beginning of the fifteenth century within a social formation which comprised of priestly chiefdoms, matrilineal descent groups, fertility and health cults and extra-clan chiefdoms (145). Her study details the political, religious and social changes that occurred in Kongo between the late 15th and 19th centuries. In 1491, King Nzinga converted to Christianity of his own free will, urging the Kongo nobility and peasant classes to follow suit. The way I see it is that the Portuguese took over the Kongo, converted their people and colonialized in the Kingdom. It seems this way because after the King was baptized, he even converted to a Christian name, Joao (Thornton, The Kingdom).

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