![]() These provinces would be governed by governors who received their orders from the King.īoth Npundi and Mbata later expanded their own territories, which would in turn expand the boundaries of the Kingdom of Kongo and Bby 1490 the Kingdom of Kongo was estimated to have around 3 million subjects in total. With help from the Mbete and other allied provinces, the Kingdom of Kongo then conquered Mpangu and Npundi to the south. The early Kingdom was to some degree founded on conquest, but was largely made up of voluntary protection arrangements. It is presumed, but not known for certain, that the Kingdom of Kongo had similar protection treaties with other smaller neighbouring states. This was also in this period that the neighbouring province of Mbata came under the protection and voluntary subordination of the Kingdom of Kongo. ![]() There is speculation, however, that earlier rulers controlled a larger territory before Lukeni lua Nimi became king, and that he simply moved the capital city to that area. It is estimated that the core of the Kingdom began in the province of Mpemba Kasi in the south of Kongo, and that Lukeni lua Nimi built the capital city of Mbanza Kongo. Historians therefore also date the founding of the Kingdom of Kongo to sometime around 1390 CE. Lukeni lua Nimi is presumed to have been born between 13 CE. Nima a Nzima and Luqueni Luansanze had a child named Lukeni lua Nimi, who would become the first person to take the title of Mutinù (King). Their marriage would solidify the alliance between the Mpemba Kasi and the neighbouring Mbata people, an alliance which would become the foundation of the Kingdom of Kongo. The founding myth of the Kingdom of Kongo begins with the marriage of Nima a Nzima to Luqueni Luansanze, the daughter of Nsa-cu-Clau the chief of the Mbata people. Later territorial expansion in the Kingdom came to a larger degree from conquest. Some historians prefer to call state entities similar to the Kingdom of Kongo as ‘commonwealths’ rather than Kingdoms, as they were built, in part, on mutual agreement, marriage alliances and cooperation rather than conquest. Much of the early territorial expansion of the Kingdom of Kongo came through various voluntary agreement with smaller neighbouring states. It is generally acknowledged, however, that the establishment of the Kingdom of Kongo came about through both the voluntary and involuntary inclusion of neighbouring states around a central core state. ![]() ![]() A further issue is that local chroniclers (those writing from an insider’s perspective), such as the Congolese historian Petelo Boka, made assumptions based on the organisation of clans in more recent history. This means that there is a need to be critical about European accounts, as they were writing from the perspective of conquerors and outsiders. Understanding the early history of the Kingdom of Kongo is complicated by the lack of written sources from the time, as well as the problematic fact that almost all of the later accounts were produced by Europeans. In 1888, what was left of the Kingdom of Kongo was made a vassal state to Portugal, and in the early 1900s it was formally integrated into the Portuguese colony in Angola. The Kingdom was centered around the great city of Mbanza Kongo, located in what is now northern Angola, (location: 6☁6′04″S 14☁4′53″E), which was later renamed to São Salvador. The Kingdom of Kongo would eventually fall to scheming nobles, feuding royal factions, and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, initiating its eventual decline. The Kingdom would reach its peak in the mid 1600s. Kingdom was founded around 1390 CE through the political marriage of Nima a Nzima, of the Mpemba Kasi, and Luqueni Luansanze, of the Mbata, which cemented the alliance between the two KiKongo speaking peoples. The name comes from the fact that the founders of the kingdom were KiKongo speaking people, and the spelling of Congo with a C comes from the Portuguese translation. The Kingdom of Kongo was a large kingdom in the western part of central Africa.
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