Lunda

The Lunda, or Balunda, are a Bantu people whose Katanga heartland lies along the Kalanyi River, spreading west into Angola and south into Zambia. In the 1600s they built the Kingdom of Lunda under the paramount title Mwata Yamvo, ruling from its moated capital of Musumba.

Tradition traces the ruling house to the marriage of the Luba prince Tshibinda Ilunga with the Lunda princess Lueji, while the first attested king, Nawej, reigned from about 1695. By 1680 the kingdom covered some 150,000 square kilometres, and 1720s campaigns carried its power beyond the Kasai River; the chief Mwata Kazembe founded an eastern Lunda state in the Luapula valley.

Lunda became a commonwealth of autonomous chiefdoms bound by tribute, whose people sold ivory and slaves to Portuguese and Swahili merchants. By the early 1800s gun-armed Chokwe pressed its western lands, foreshadowing the empire's collapse.