A brass crucifix made in the Kingdom of Kongo
Crucifix, 16th–17th century with later additions
Marked Mbanza Kongo (São Salvador)

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The Kingdom of Kongo

A kingdom of central Africa whose king, Nzinga a Nkuwu, was baptised in 1491. His son Afonso I wrote letters to the king of Portugal complaining about the slave trade, some of the earliest African writing in a European language that survives.

Place
Mbanza Kongo (São Salvador) · Soyo · LuandaAfrica
Laid out as
A civilisationA society seen from the inside: its rulers, places, work, beliefs and daily life, laid out like the rooms of a house.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IMbanza Kongo
  2. IIBaptism in 1491
  3. IIIAfonso’s letters
  4. IVThe slave trade and its damage
  5. VKimpa Vita and the Antonians
  6. VIRaffia cloth and ivory

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Nzinga a Nkuwu
  • Afonso I
  • Kimpa Vita

Objects

  • Kongo raffia cloth
  • Afonso’s letters in the Portuguese archives
  • Crucifixes of Kongo

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1390 to 1914. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?