Luanda

Luanda lies on the Atlantic coast of west-central Africa, where a long offshore island shelters a deep bay. Before the Portuguese established a settlement on the mainland, the island was known for the small nzimbu shells collected there and used as currency in the kingdom of Kongo. The sheltered anchorage would become a major port connecting the African interior with the South Atlantic and with Portuguese settlements on the opposite shore.

Paulo Dias de Novais founded São Paulo da Assunção de Luanda in 1576, bringing settlers and soldiers to a coast contested by African rulers and the Portuguese. Luanda became a base for campaigns against Ndongo and for the extension of Portuguese influence along the Kwanza. In 1641 Dutch forces seized the port and allied with Queen Njinga, but a Portuguese expedition from Brazil retook it in 1648.

The port's Atlantic commerce was dominated by the forced transportation of enslaved Africans, many of them sent to Brazil. Merchants and intermediaries supplied captives from a broad hinterland, and the traffic tied Luanda closely to the economies across the ocean. One estimate places the number shipped from the port between 1710 and 1830 at about 1.2 million. Portugal formally abolished the slave trade in 1836, near the end of an era in which that commerce had profoundly shaped the city.