A Short History of the Kingdom of Kongo

The Kingdom of Kongo was one of the most powerful states in Central Africa. Kongo was founded in around 1390, and by 1490 it had grown to rule three million subjects. It had a powerful army and a sophisticated political structure. The Kingdom only ended in the early twentieth century.

ORIGIN

The Kingdom of Kongo was spread across three modern-day countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and the Republic of Congo. The Kongo Kingdom was extremely ethnically diverse. This was because Bantu-speaking peoples from West Africa had migrated into Central Africa in the first millennium BC, and they had mixed with other immigrants to produce a massive range of ethnic groups. Each ethnic group made up a chiefdom, and the Kingdom was formed when several chiefdoms were united under a single ruler.

We do not know where exactly the Kingdom began, but probably it started with an alliance between the Mpemba Kasi and Mbata peoples. By 1490, they had conquered Mpangu and Npundi in the south and had a population of three million.

SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

Kongolese society was organised into villages. Each village was made up of big families called ‘kanda’, united by a common ancestor. Social status and wealth was passed on through women, not men. Property and royal status were dependent on the mother, not the father. Usually, the head of the kanda was male, but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was also common for women to be in charge.

In the villages, women worked in the fields and men gathered materials from trees, producing cloth, palm wine and other goods. There were also towns, like the capital of the Kingdom, Mbanza Kongo. This is where the king (Mani Kongo) and his elite lived, up in the mountains two thousand feet above sea level. The city was well-designed and impressive to look at: Portuguese visitors in the 1490s commented on how advanced it was.

POLITICAL ORGANIZATION

The Kongo Kingdom had six main provinces. Each province was commanded by a governor, sent by the king, who had direct control over the land and its people. The governors collected taxes, raised soldiers, organised the local justice system and maintained roads. This system made the king very powerful. In 1500, he could raise an army of 80,000 men through his provincial governors.

As well as the core six provinces, there were many tribute states, which sent money or goods to the Mani Kongo in exchange for protection or independence. The tribute states paid the king in cloth, ivory, hides, slaves and food, as well as money. People in the Kingdom used mollusc shells (nzimbu) as currency. This arrangement was more common in the early days of the Kongo Kingdom, but as time went on the kings tended to rule new lands directly through governors.

RELIGION

In 1490, the king of Kongo converted to Christianity. Many of his elites did the same. We do not know why this happened, but we do know that most of his subjects did not follow the king immediately. For most people, Christianity was just one religion among many, and traditional African beliefs persisted. This shows how strong traditional religions were at the end of the fifteenth century.

WHY DOES RELIGION MATTER?

The Kongo Kingdom is an example of a wealthy and advanced state in Central Africa. Often, historians focus on empires in other parts of Africa, like Mali and Ethiopia – but the Kongo shows that sophisticated societies could be found all over the continent.

OLIVER HIRSCH

VIEW ALL POSTS

13 Comments

  1. Louis Mbun 7 years ago July 31, 2017

    Excellent

    REPLY
  2. KABEGA JAMES 7 years ago July 31, 2017

    what was the push factor for the migration?

    REPLY
  3. sanusi 7 years ago July 31, 2017

    Very inspiring history please continue to share our histories!!! And again this page talked about online courses so how far about that

    REPLY
  4. Leon 7 years ago August 1, 2017

    I find this article very interesting. What are your sources?

    REPLY
  5. Nicholas Nyabiage 7 years ago August 1, 2017

    Well searched history.

    REPLY
  6. Digito 7 years ago August 1, 2017

    Kongo Kingdom had Ambassadors in Vatican and Portugal. The first anthem of Haiti was sung in Kikongo which was back then the official language. They used mathematics, invented calculator using tiny bones and had their own alphabet. The influenced cultures up to Ivory cost passing throug Cameroon. They wearing materials were of better quality than the one used in Europe back then…

    REPLY
  7. Tom 7 years ago August 1, 2017

    Wonderful piece.

    REPLY
  8. Samuel Saarra Sarkay Kargbo 7 years ago August 2, 2017

    Great historical data.
    Could any one tell if Limbas were among those tribes or they migrated into the region from Sierra Leone as the Ma limba claim.

    REPLY
  9. Bruney 7 years ago August 20, 2017

    africans people need this kind of story in order to break away from ignorance and know how powefull we are.

    REPLY
  10. Bill Crawford 6 years ago April 12, 2018

    Was the Kingdom of the Mani Kongo of
    AD 1500 of comparable impressiveness as the Empire of the Hittites of c. 1200 BC?

    REPLY
  11. cognizant 3 years ago June 7, 2021

    Ꮃoԝ, that’s what I was exploring foг, what a material!
    existing here at this web site, thanks admin of this site.

    REPLY
  12. คลิปโป๊ 3 years ago June 22, 2021

    Ϝastidious answer back in return of this difficulty with real
    arguments and descrіbing the wholе thіng regarding that.

    REPLY
  13. www.xmc.pl 2 years ago June 29, 2022

    How do I use my wordpress theme on my regular subpages?

    REPLY

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function create_function() in /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-content/themes/helpinghands/framework/inc/sd-theme-functions/sd-functions.php:188 Stack trace: #0 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(326): sd_style_tag_cloud() #1 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/plugin.php(205): WP_Hook->apply_filters() #2 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/category-template.php(778): apply_filters() #3 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/widgets/class-wp-widget-tag-cloud.php(60): wp_tag_cloud() #4 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-widget.php(394): WP_Widget_Tag_Cloud->widget() #5 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/widgets.php(837): WP_Widget->display_callback() #6 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-content/themes/helpinghands/sidebar.php(26): dynamic_sidebar() #7 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/template.php(790): require_once('/home/213602.cl...') #8 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/template.php(725): load_template() #9 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/general-template.php(136): locate_template() #10 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-content/themes/helpinghands/single.php(114): get_sidebar() #11 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-includes/template-loader.php(106): include('/home/213602.cl...') #12 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-blog-header.php(19): require_once('/home/213602.cl...') #13 /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/index.php(17): require('/home/213602.cl...') #14 {main} thrown in /home/213602.cloudwaysapps.com/nxykgcmrcx/public_html/wp-content/themes/helpinghands/framework/inc/sd-theme-functions/sd-functions.php on line 188