Buali

Buali, also known as Mbanza Loango, was the royal capital of the kingdom of Loango, inland from its Atlantic harbour. It was the seat of the Maloango and a political and religious centre for the Vili people. The capital lay within the province of Piri, surrounded by communities whose routes connected the forested interior with the coast.

By the seventeenth century European visitors described Buali and its ruler, while trade along the coast drew goods from far inland. Vili merchants took part in networks extending into the Mayombe forest. Over the eighteenth century the Atlantic trade in enslaved people expanded greatly at the Loango coast, drawing captives from the interior to ships bound across the ocean, alongside ports at Cabinda and Malemba.