The Kingdom of Kongo was a major African state whose capital stood at Mbanza Congo, near the mouth of the Congo River. Its history gives the book an early geographical and political frame for Portuguese expansion in the region: a kingdom that flourished before European intervention was later brought under the rule of the King of Portugal and destroyed.

Setting and Capital

The Kingdom of Kongo flourished in the region around the Congo River when the Portuguese captain Diogo Cão arrived at the river’s mouth in 1482. Its capital was Mbanza Congo. In Portuguese times the town was known as São Salvador; by 1975 it had become a small provincial town and the capital of Angola’s Zaire province.

The book places the kingdom beside Ndongo, which lay to its south. The two states formed part of a wider political landscape that preceded the Portuguese settlement of Luanda. That settlement was established in 1573, ninety years after Diogo Cão’s arrival, by Paulo Dias de Novais, who then led soldiers down the Cuanza River.

Portuguese Expansion and Destruction

The arrival of Diogo Cão in 1482 marks the beginning of Portuguese expansion in this part of Africa, though the book distinguishes that initial encounter from the later, de facto conquest of Angolan territories. It describes both the Kingdom of Kongo and Ndongo as eventually brought under the rule of the King of Portugal and subsequently destroyed.

The book connects Portuguese expansion to the pursuit of enslaved people. It describes the export of slaves as the principal reason for Portugal’s presence in Angola and says that Portuguese efforts to capture people involved repeated wars. The Kingdom of Kongo appears within this account as one of the great African states in the region transformed by European power, although the account does not make every later conflict or export specific to the kingdom itself.

The Slave Trade and Historical Legacy

The book situates the rise of the slave trade in a transatlantic demand for labor, particularly for sugar and cotton plantations in the Americas. It identifies Africa, and especially Angola, as a major source of enslaved people. Historians’ estimates cited in the text put the number shipped from territories within the borders of present-day Angola at three to four million. The figure refers to those territories, not to the Kingdom of Kongo alone.

The consequences reach beyond the region. The book notes that a significant portion of the populations of Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba descend from Angolan slaves. It also links that history to later political and cultural ties: Brazil was the first state to recognize the People’s Republic of Angola, while Cuba provided major assistance to Angola’s liberation forces. In this historical framing, the Kingdom of Kongo’s location near the beginning of Portuguese expansion connects the history of African states to a much wider Atlantic history of coercion, migration, and enduring relationships.