Cabinda

The Cabinda culture covers the Kongo-speaking peoples of the forested Atlantic coast between the Chiloango River and the Congo mouth, above all the Woyo of Ngoyo and the people of Kakongo, both Bakongo.

In the thirteenth century the small Mayombe state of Vungu led a confederation including Ngoyo and Kakongo, regarded as one seed of the Kingdom of Kongo. The Woyo built hereditary Ngoyo, its ruler titled the Mangoyo, while Kakongo appears in a Kongo royal title in 1535 and traded independently with merchants from the 1620s in ivory, copper and slaves.

By 1700 Cabinda was the busiest slave port north of Luanda; in 1783 Ngoyo and Kakongo destroyed a Portuguese fort together, but the trade hollowed out the monarchies, and Ngoyo collapsed in the 1830s when its nobles could no longer choose a king.