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Manikongo was the title of the ruler of the Kingdom of Kongo, a kingdom that existed from the 14th to the 19th centuries and consisted of land in present-day Angola, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The manikongo's seat of power was Mbanza Kongo, now the capital of Zaire Province in Angola. The manikongo appointed governors for the provinces of the Kingdom and received tribute from neighbouring subjects.
The Kongo people are a Bantu ethnic group primarily defined as the speakers of Kikongo. Subgroups include the Beembe, Bwende, Vili, Sundi, Yombe, Dondo, Lari, and others.
The Kingdom of Ndongo, 1515-1909, was an early-modern African state located in the highlands between the Lukala and Kwanza Rivers, in what is now Angola.
The Kingdom of Loango was a pre-colonial African state, during approximately the 16th to 19th centuries in what is now the western part of the Republic of the Congo, Southern Gabon and Cabinda. Situated to the north of the more powerful Kingdom of Kongo, at its height in the 17th century Loango influence extended from Cape St Catherine in the north to almost the mouth of the Congo River.
The Kingdom of Kongo was a kingdom in Central Africa. It was located in present-day northern Angola, the western portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Southern of Gabon and the Republic of the Congo. 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 neighboring kingdoms, such as Ngoyo, Kakongo, Loango, Ndongo, and Matamba, the latter two located in what is Angola today.
Soyo is a city, with a population of 200,920, and a municipality, with a population of 227,175, located in the province of Zaire in Angola, at the mouth of the Congo river. Historically, Soyo was a significant city in conflicts between the Kingdom of Kongo, Portuguese Angola, and the Dutch West India Company. Soyo became an independent state in the 17th century and had significant influence on politics in Kongo during the Kongo Civil War.
The Bemba belong to a large group of Bantu peoples, primarily in the Northern, Luapula, Muchinga and the northern Central Province of Zambia. The Bemba entered Zambia before 1740 by crossing the Luapula River from Kola. Several other ethnic groups in the northern and Luapula regions of Zambia speak languages which are similar to Bemba, but have different origins. The Bemba people are not indigenous to Copperbelt Province; they arrived there during the 1930s due to employment opportunities in copper mining.
The Catholic Church arrived in the Kingdom of Kongo shortly after the first Portuguese explorers reached its shores in 1483. Portuguese left several of their own number and kidnapped a group of Kongo including at least one nobleman, Kala ka Mfusu, taking them to Portugal where they stayed a year, learned Portuguese and were converted to Christianity. The group was returned to Kongo in 1485 and Kala ka Mfusu led a royal mission from Kongo's manikongo, Nzinga a Nkuwu to Portugal. Following their arrival in late 1486 the embassy stayed nearly four years in Lisbon with the monks of Saint John the Baptist. There they studied Christianity and Portuguese with Vicente dos Anjos, and began the start of a Kongolese version of Christianity.
Mvemba a Nzinga, Nzinga Mbemba, Funsu Nzinga Mvemba or Dom Alfonso, also known as King Afonso I, was the sixth ruler of the Kingdom of Kongo from the Lukeni kanda dynasty and ruled in the first half of the 16th century. He reigned over the Kongo Empire from 1509 to late 1542 or 1543.
Nzinga-a-Nkuwu João I was the 5th ManiKongo of the Kingdom of Kongo between 1470 and 1509. He voluntarily converted to Roman Catholicism. He was baptized on 3 May 1491 and took the Christian name of João. Soon after, ManiKongo Nzinga-a-Nkuwu João I abandoned the new faith for a number of reasons, one of them being the Roman Catholic Church's requirement of monogamy. Politically, he could not afford to abandon polygamy and embrace monogamy, a cultural shift that the king could not contemplate as power in Kongo was elective, rather than hereditary as in Europe; as Kongo culture followed a matrilineality structure, where the elder son of the king is not automatically the next king.
Afonso II was a ruler of the Kingdom of Kongo in 1561.
The precolonial history of Angola lasted until Portugal annexed the territory as a colony in 1655.
The Kongo Civil War (1665–1709) was a war of succession between rival houses of the Kingdom of Kongo. The war waged throughout the middle of the 17th and 18th centuries pitting partisans of the House of Kinlaza against the House of Kimpanzu. Numerous other factions entered the fray claiming descent from one or both of the main parties such as the Água Rosada of Kibangu and the da Silva of Soyo. By the end of the war, Kongo's vaunted capital had been destroyed and many Bakongo were sold into the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
The Seven Kingdoms of Kongo dia Nlaza were a confederation of states in west Central Africa that were absorbed into the Kingdom of Kongo in the 16th century, being mentioned in the titles of King Alvaro II in 1583. This polity or region was first mentioned in texts of the Kingdom of Kongo in the late 16th century, although it probably existed much earlier. It was only then being incorporated into Kongo, through the kingdom's eastern province of Mbata Kingdom. It is unclear what the Seven Kingdoms were, though perhaps they included Kundi and Okanga. Presumably these kingdoms represented an alliance of several smaller polities, though the sources of the time tell us nothing about it.
M'banza-Kongo, is the capital of Angola's northwestern Zaire Province with a population of 148,000 in 2014. M'banza Kongo was the capital of the Kingdom of Kongo since its foundation before the arrival of the Portuguese in 1483 until the abolition of the kingdom in 1915, aside from a brief period of abandonment during civil wars in the 17th century. In 2017, M'banza Kongo was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Afonso V of the Congo was a Kinlaza manikongo of the Kingdom of Kongo from 1785 to 1787. He succeeded to his brother José I of Kongo without any struggle in April 1785 and was part of the southern faction of the Kanda Kinzala based in Nkondo. He was a king known for his piety and took the pompous title of the powerful Dom Alfonso V, King of Congo, ruler of part of Ethiopia in his letters. It is possible he was poisoned by his successor in order to seize the throne. His sudden death caused a period of turmoil within the nation that would not end until Henrique II took the throne.
Henrique was a prince of Kongo and a son of Afonso I. He became a Catholic priest shortly after the Christianization of the kingdom and dedicated his life to the catechism of the Kongolese, being appointed in 1518 titular bishop of Utica, in present-day Tunisia. He was the first central African bishop in history.
Congolese nationality law is a legal statute regulated by the Constitution of the Republic of the Congo. It determine who is, or is eligible to be, a national of the Republic of the Congo. The legal means to acquire nationality, formal legal membership in a nation, differ from the domestic relationship of rights and obligations between a national and the nation, known as citizenship. Congolese nationality is typically obtained under the principle of jus soli, i.e. by birth in the Republic of the Congo, or jus sanguinis, born abroad to parents with Congolese nationality. It can be granted to persons with an affiliation to the country, or to a permanent resident who has lived in the country for a given period of time through naturalization.
The specific ancestry of Leonor Nzinga Nlaza is unknown; she was married to King Nzinga a Nkuwu of the Kingdom of Kongo sometime before 1483. Following contact with the Portuguese beginning in 1482 and including an exchange of embassy, her husband decided to become a Christian in 1491 and was baptized as João. However, he was reluctant to allow women to be baptized. Nzinga a Nlaza however, persisted in demanding that women be baptized, and eventually won the king over, allowing her to be baptized along with other noble women. She was baptized on 5 June 1491 taking the name Leonor from the name of the Queen of Portugal at the time.
References
- ↑ Pigafetta, Filippo (1881). A Report of the Kingdom of Congo and the Surrounding Countries. London: John Murray.p. 60
- ↑ Pigafetta, Filippo (1881). A Report of the Kingdom of Congo and the Surrounding Countries. London: John Murray.p. 60
- ↑ Thornton, John (2020). A History of West Central Africa to 1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 149-150. ISBN 978-1-107-12715-9.
- ↑ Clist, Bernard (2015). "The Elusive Archaeology of Kongo Urbanism: the Case of Kindoki, Mbanza Nsundi (Lower Congo, DRC)". African Archaeological Review. 32 (3): 369–412. doi:10.1007/s10437-015-9199-2. hdl: 2263/51295 . S2CID 254186024.
- ↑ Bentley, W. Holman (1900). Pioneering on the Congo. London. p. 23.
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