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Kongo or Kikongo is one of the Bantu languages spoken by the Kongo people living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and Angola. It is a tonal language. The vast majority of present-day speakers live in Africa. There are roughly seven million native speakers of Kongo in the above-named countries. An estimated five million more speakers use it as a second language.
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, 1515-1671, was an early-modern African state located in the highlands between the Lukala and Kwanza Rivers, in what is now Angola.
The pre-colonial history of the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo encompasses the history of the Congo Basin region up to the establishment of European colonial rule in the era of New Imperialism and particularly the creation of the Congo Free State and its expansion into the interior after 1885. As the modern territorial boundaries of the Democratic Republic of the Congo did not exist in this period, it is inseparable from the wider pre-colonial histories of Central Africa, the Great Lakes and Rift Valley as well as the Atlantic World and Swahili coast.
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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 neighbouring kingdoms, such as Ngoyo, Kakongo, Loango, Ndongo, and Matamba, the latter two located in what is Angola today.
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Nzari was a small kingdom located on the north bank of the Congo River. It is mentioned in Dutch sources of the seventeenth century in particular. It is not clear from these sources whether the territory was independent or a part of another political entity, such as Loango. It was not found in the titles of the kings of Kongo, for example, Afonso I of Kongo's list of titles in his letter to the Pope of 1535.
Mpemba was a 13th century confederation in the western Congo Basin. Its northernmost territory, Mpemba Kasi, was incorporated into the founding of the Kingdom of Kongo in the 14th century. It neighboured the confederations of Vungu and Seven Kingdoms of Kongo dia Nlaza. Its capital and southernmost tip was on the Loze River in Angola, and it reached northwards 150 kilometres to the Congo River. It had sub-kingdoms, such as Mpemba Kasi and Vunda which was complex enough to have its own sub-units which included Mpangala.
References
- ↑ Jan Vansina, Notes sur l'origine du royaume de Kongo, The Journal of African History, 1963, Vol. 4, No. 1, p. 33-38
- ↑ Louis Jadin, Relations sur le Congo et l'Angola tirées des Archives de la Compagnie de Jésus 1621-1631, Academia Belgica, 1968, p. 392
- ↑ Thornton, John K., ed. (2020), "The Development of States in West Central Africa to 1540", A History of West Central Africa to 1850, New Approaches to African History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 16–55, ISBN 978-1-107-56593-7 , retrieved 2024-09-21
- ↑ Afonso I to the Pope Paulo III, 21 February 1535 in Antonio Brasio, ed. Monumenta Missionaria Africana (15 vols, Lisbon 1952-88) 2: 38.
- ↑ [Mateus Cardoso] Historia do Reino de Congo (1624) ed. Antonio Brasio (Lisbon, 1969)