Kongo

The Kongo, or Bakongo, are the Bantu people who speak the Kikongo cluster of related dialects and live along the Atlantic coast of Central Africa. Around 1390 their dynasties founded the Kingdom of Kongo, ruled from Mbanza Kongo by the Manikongo.

The Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão reached the coast in 1483, and in 1491 King Nzinga a Nkuwu was baptized as João I; under Afonso I, who won the throne in 1509, Catholicism became the religion of the ruling elite. From the sixteenth century the slave trade reshaped Kongo society.

The Manikongo's power collapsed after the defeat and death of King António I at the Battle of Mbwila against Portuguese Angola in 1665. Rival royal houses then fought long civil wars, yet Kongo communities kept their language, clan structure and trading networks along the river routes into the nineteenth century.