Early Kongo-Portuguese Relations: A New Interpretation

1981 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 183-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Thornton
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Military Assistance ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation

One of the most durable myths of the history of central Africa is that of the early subversion and domination of the kingdom of Kongo by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. Its original statement was made by James Duffy in 1959 and was amplified by Basil Davidson two years later. According to this argument the Portuguese had found a well-developed kingdom of Kongo when they reached the mouth of the Zaire River in 1483, and had entered into an alliance with the ruler. The alliance, first made with king Nzinga a Nkuwu (baptized as João I in 1491) and strengthened and continued with his son Mvemba a Nzinga (better known under his baptized name of Afonso I, 1506-1543) involved a partnership in which Portuguese settled in Kongo and provided technological and military assistance to Kongo in exchange for trade, mostly in slaves. As a result of this exchange Kongo adopted Christianity, and for a time the two kings addressed each other as “Brother.” But the alliance, despite its good beginning, was rapidly upset by the greed of the Portuguese settlers, who saw the situation merely as an opening for quick riches through the slave trade. As a result the higher aims of the Portuguese court were subverted--first because the Portuguese, with a higher level of development, were able to benefit from their position more than Kongo; secondly because Lisbon was unable to control its settlers in Kongo or São Tomé. In the end there was a massive involvement of Portuguese in Kongolese affairs and a breakdown of authority in Kongo.

Mission and Colonialism

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 254-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Retief Müller
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Ethnic Conflict ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Interdependent Relationships

This article focuses on two British colonial territories in southern and central Africa, Mashonaland and Nyasaland in the late 19th to early 20th centuries. It concerns the history of Afrikaner missionaries from South Africa’s Dutch Reformed Church (DRC), and their relationships with opposing interest groups. The period in question saw some inter-ethnic conflict among indigenous peoples, which included an underground slave trade, as well as much colonial-indigenous strife. The article particularly considers the balancing act missionaries sought to achieve in terms of their paternalistic, yet interdependent relationships with indigenous rulers over against their equally ambiguous relationships with the colonial authorities. As such this article presents a novel way of looking at Afrikaner missionaries and their entanglements with indigenous leaders.

The Early History of the Sultanate of Angoche

1972 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. D. D. Newitt
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Early History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Set Up

The sultanate of Angoche on the Moçambique coast was founded probably towards the end of the fifteenth century by refugees from Kilwa. It became a base for Muslim traders who wanted to use the Zambezi route to the central African trading fairs and it enabled them to by-pass the Portuguese trade monopoly at Sofala. The Portuguese were not able to check this trade until they themselves set up bases on the Zambezi in the 1530s and 1540s, and from that time the sultanate began to decline. Internal dissensions among the ruling families led to the Portuguese obtaining control of the sultanate in the late sixteenth century, but this control was abandoned in the following century when the trade of the Angoche coast dwindled to insignificance. During the eighteenth century movements among the Macua peoples of the mainland and the development of the slave trade in the Indian Ocean laid the foundations for the revival of the sultanate in the nineteenth century.

Imagining the Conquest

2018 ◽  
pp. 17-62
Author(s):  
Elena A. Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Regional Autonomy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Overseas Territories ◽  
The City

Chapter 1 gives a history of British expansion into Caribbean waters claimed by Spain and developing conflict over commercial access to and political control over the island of Cuba. A deep-seated obsession with capturing Havana developed as early as the sixteenth century, during these years of English and later British advance. In the early eighteenth century, the British-dominated slave trade to Spanish America and the contraband traffic that accompanied it led to conflicts with Spain that precipitated a cycle of wars. The Spanish monarchy sought exclusive political and commercial control over its overseas territories, yet, to its dismay, the local dynamics of these wars led to even more regional autonomy and integration for its overseas possessions. Through a cycle of eighteenth-century wars targeting Spanish America, British subjects developed closer commercial ties with Havana, and British commanders gained better knowledge of how to attack the city with each failed attempt.

Slavery and Slaving in the Medieval and Post-Medieval Kingdoms of the Middle Nile

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David N. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
Nile Valley ◽  
External Trade ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
History Of

While it is commonly assumed that slavery, and especially an external slave trade, were significant features of the history of the earlier kingdoms in the Middle Nile, the evidence for this is less certain than the confident assertions of earlier scholars might suggest. Drawing on a range of archaeological and historical evidence, this chapter reassesses our current understanding of the development of slavery in this region in the medieval and post-medieval periods. Forms of slavery were clearly ever-present within the Middle Nile region during both periods, with slave taking likely a common practice on the margins of its early kingdoms. A significant external trade in slaves, however, is hard to demonstrate before the sixteenth century. Our perceptions of such a trade as a timeless and eternal feature of the history of the Nile Valley deserve closer scrutiny.

The Pinkster King and the King of Kongo

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeroen Dewulf
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New Jersey ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Mutual Aid ◽  
New Amsterdam ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
European Standards

This book presents the history of the nation’s forgotten Dutch slave community and free Dutch-speaking African-Americans from seventeenth-century New Amsterdam to nineteenth-century New York and New Jersey. It also develops a provocative new interpretation of one of America’s most intriguing black folkloric traditions, Pinkster. Dewulf rejects the traditional interpretation of this celebration of a “slave king” as a form of carnival. Instead, he shows that it is a ritual rooted in mutual aid and slave brotherhood traditions. By placing Pinkster in an Atlantic context, Dewulf identifies striking parallels to royal election rituals in slave communities elsewhere in the Americas, which he relates to the ancient Kingdom of Kongo and the historical impact of Portuguese culture in West-Central Africa. Whereas the importance of African-American fraternities providing mutual aid has long been acknowledged for the post-slavery era, Dewulf’s focus on the social capital of slaves traces concern for mutual aid back to seventeenth-century Manhattan. He suggests a stronger impact of Manhattan’s first slave community on the development of African-American identity in New York and New Jersey than has hitherto been assumed. While the earliest historians working on slave culture in a North American context were mainly interested in an assumed process of assimilation according to European standards, later generations pointed out the need to look for indigenous African continuities. The findings of this book suggest the necessity to complement the latter with an increased focus on the contact Africans had with European?primarily Portuguese?culture before they were shipped as slaves to the Americas.

Slaves and Tyrants: Dutch Tribulations in Seventeenth-Century Mrauk-U

1997 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
Bad Faith ◽  
South And Southeast Asia ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis paper is concerned with the travails of the factors of the Dutch East India Company (or VOC) in the northern Burmese kingdom of Mrauk-U (or Arakan). The Dutch entered into trade in this rather obscure region, at the frontier of South and Southeast Asia, primarily owing to their interest in slaves, to be used in urban and rural settlements under their control in Indonesia. Dutch demand fed into the logic by which the Mrauk-U state from the latter half of the sixteenth century developed a formidable war-fleet, through which raids on the peasantry in eastern Bengal were conducted by Magh captains and Luso-Asian mercenaries, who collaborated with them. However, the whole commercial relationship was underwritten by a moral and cultural tension. The Dutch factors in their writings analysed here, insisted that the Mrauk-U kings were "tyrants," citing their slave trade as a key sign; a particular target for their attacks was the ruler Thado Mintara (r. 1645-52). Yet the Dutch too were complicit in the very same slave trade, and were perhaps even aware of their own "bad faith." For their part, the rulers of Mrauk-U regarded the Dutch with suspicion, while criticising their hypocrisy and double-dealing. Such tensions, negotiated through the 1630s and a part of the 1640s, eventually led the Dutch to withdraw from the trade, and then to re-establish tenuous contacts with some difficulty in the 1650s. The paper thus explores both the history of a form of hostile trade, and the process of the creation of mutual stereotypes, that went with the nature of commercial relations.

A history of botanical collections in the Luangwa Valley, Zambia

1998 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-291
Author(s):  
P.S.M. PHIRI ◽  
D.M. MOORE
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Impact Assessment ◽  
Vascular Plants ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Peak Activity ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Made In

Central Africa remained botanically unknown to the outside world up to the end of the eighteenth century. This paper provides a historical account of plant explorations in the Luangwa Valley. The first plant specimens were collected in 1897 and the last serious botanical explorations were made in 1993. During this period there have been 58 plant collectors in the Luangwa Valley with peak activity recorded in the 1960s. In 1989 1,348 species of vascular plants were described in the Luangwa Valley. More botanical collecting is needed with a view to finding new plant taxa, and also to provide a satisfactory basis for applied disciplines such as ecology, phytogeography, conservation and environmental impact assessment.

Esotericism and the “Coded Word” in Mormonism

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Clyde Forsberg Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
Divine Inspiration ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
New Religion

In the history of American popular religion, the Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, have undergone a series of paradigmatic shifts in order to join the Christian mainstream, abandoning such controversial core doctrines and institutions as polygamy and the political kingdom of God. Mormon historians have played an important role in this metamorphosis, employing a version (if not perversion) of the Church-Sect Dichotomy to change the past in order to control the future, arguing, in effect, that founder Joseph Smith Jr’s erstwhile magical beliefs and practices gave way to a more “mature” and bible-based self-understanding which is then said to best describe the religion that he founded in 1830. However, an “esoteric approach” as Faivre and Hanegraaff understand the term has much to offer the study of Mormonism as an old, new religion and the basis for a more even methodological playing field and new interpretation of Mormonism as equally magical (Masonic) and biblical (Evangelical) despite appearances. This article will focus on early Mormonism’s fascination with and employment of ciphers, or “the coded word,” essential to such foundation texts as the Book of Mormon and “Book of Abraham,” as well as the somewhat contradictory, albeit colonial understanding of African character and destiny in these two hermetic works of divine inspiration and social commentary in the Latter-day Saint canonical tradition.

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