Soyo

Soyo was a province of the Kingdom of Kongo at the mouth of the Congo River. Its lord was baptized in 1491, and its port of Mpinda became a centre of the trade in enslaved people, ivory and copper.

Soyo became independent in the seventeenth century and intervened in Kongo's civil war, placing Afonso II on the throne in 1666. In 1670 its forces, supported by Ngoyo and supplied by the Dutch, defeated a Portuguese invasion at Kitombo.