In the fourteenth century, in the Lower Congo and northern Angola, the Kongo Kingdom was founded. The Kongo’s home originally lies along the Congo River, and studies showed that the origin of the Kingdom was in the small state of Mpemba Kasi, located south of modern day Matadi in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Kongo was ruled by a king and was divides into six provinces. Which was administered by a governor, and the capital at Mbanza was born. The capital and surrounding areas were densely settled, this made it easier for the king to keep a close eye on manpower and supplies necessary to wield impressive power to centralize the state. When the Portuguese came to the Kongo in 1483, the king Nizinga a Nkuwu and his son Mvemba a Nzinga
The book mainly chronicles the efforts of King Leopold II of Belgium which is to make the Congo into a colonial empire. During the period that the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River.
The story starts with King Leopold II of Belgium. In the scramble for Africa, many nations rushed to establish colonies, and those who did made a great profit from them. The king himself wanted to compete with them, as well as amass a profit. He traveled to several British colonies and learnt how to establish and manage a colony of his own. The king himself then secretly bought the Congo, and supported an expedition led by Henry Morton Stanly.
Hailing from the African state of Ndongo and born in 1581 during the start of Luandan disagreement with Portuguese settlers (Toler 265), Queen Nzinga of the African Mbundu tribe stood up for her country and reestablished power over her people. Nzinga came in a time period that needed her. She got her country of Matamba (present day Angola) equal, both economically and socially, to the Portuguese. In order to do this, Nzinga took measures to place herself in the right position to eventually seize rule and steer her country in the right direction, even though it prompted a steady flow of opposition from her enemies. These initial enemies included the Imbangala tribes and irritated Portuguese Settlers, both of which she succeeded in turning into allies. Queen Nzinga's rule was well justified by a legal rise to the throne, and her subsequent role as a skilled ruler counteracted her reputation as a thriving slave trader.
King Leopold and his allies’ had great power over the Congo, which he soon exploited for its large supply of rubber. As said in the King Leopold’s Ghost, “For Europ...
The land Leopold had obtained was about eighty times larger than that of Belgium itself. Plus, Leopold was proclaimed the “sovereign” ruler of all the Congo Free Sta...
During the 17th century, slavery was a widely used commodity with the Europeans, little do people know however that African kings also had and accepted slavery in their own nations. King Nzinga Mbemba of Congo and the King of Ouidah had similarities on the issue of slavery; they tolerated the use of slaves. Congo’s king had no contingency with slavery; in fact, he had slaves in his country. When the Portuguese were purchasing goods in Congo, the king had men “investigate if the mentioned goods are captives or free men” (NZ, 622). The fact that the king differentiates the men between ‘free’ and ‘captives’ illustrates that not all people in Congo are free. Whether these captives are from the country of Congo or not, they are still caught and held all across the nation against their will. King Mbemba kept slaves because the population of Congo was vastly declining due to the slave trade. In his letter, he pleads with the king of Portug...
Alexis Rockman traveled the world, and used his travels as inspiration for his paintings. He painted the Kapok Tree after visiting Guyana, a country in South America. This painting beautifully depicts a tree in the rainforest. He addresses the fact that there are so many problems in society that are being overlooked. People do not realize their importance in changing things for good. Not only do we have the ability to cause change, it is our responsibility because we are the root of all the problems. Alexis Rockman frames the Kapok Tree in such a way that the audience notices the vibrantly colored lifeforms at the bottom and then he draws a line, with the tree, up to the dark sky showing how there is so much more to this world than we first realize.
The admin of The Kinfolk Kollective is transphobic, abusive and refuses to fight oppression when such struggle would damage her ego. A trans woman asked her to take down a transphobic post, and instead she derailed the conversation to be about white feminism, and deleted pro-trans comments from people of color to fit that narrative. This is not her first instance of transmisogyny, and the intentional narrative manipulation signifies that this will not be her last. We call upon other intersectional and revolutionary organizations to correct this error, or failing that, disassociate with the page.
Portuguese missionaries and trading partners were among the first to meet Africans along the coast of the Atlantic. It was one of these kings, the king of the West African state of Congo, Nzinga Mbemba's father, that provided a coastal settlement for the Portuguese. Adopting Christianity for the nation, including the baptizing of both himself and his son, there seemed to be an alliance between the two nations, as seen in the introduction of Nzinga Mbemba's, “Appeal to the King of Portugal, 1526”. However, after Nzinga Mbemba took the throne, trouble began to arise in Congo due to the Portuguese pushing boundaries that threatened to devastate the nation. This is when the king of Congo wrote a letter to the king of Portugal, which used a variety of psychological strategies that evoke guilt and religious passion, Mbemba establishes a direct linkage between him and the king of Portugal. In consequence, the king of Portugal would become more likely to grant any request that Mbemba would ask for, although Mbemba's true reason for writing the letter was to manipulate the king of Portugal into helping to get part of Mbemba's own power back.
The Portuguese arrived in Benin, in modern Nigeria, between 1472 and 1486 to find an established and ancient kingdom with remarkable social and ritual complexity, with art that was comparatively naturalistic, and with a political system that was, on the surface, recognizable to the Europeans: monarchy. Even more importantly, they found a land rich in pepper, cloth, ivory, and slaves, and immediately set out to establish trade (Ben-Amos 35-6). Though we often imagine "first contacts" between Europeans and Africans as clashes of epochal proportions, leaving Europeans free to manipulate and coerce the flabbergasted and paralyzed Africans, this misjudges the resilience and indeed, preparedness, of the Benin people. The Benin were able to draw on their cultural, political, and religious traditions to fit the European arrival in an understandable context. Indeed, as the great brass plaques of the Benin palace demonstrate, the arrival was in fact manipulated by the Benin to strengthen, not diminish, indigenous royal power.
It is widely debated why exactly King Leopold decided to conquer the Congo, but the general consensus seems to be that it was out of the belief that “the highlands of the Congo may be as rich in gold as the mountains of the western slope of the American Continent” (Stead). In the mid-1870s, the King hired Henry Stanley, who was familiar with many parts of Africa, to help him go about conquering. During the following years Stanley stayed in Africa, talking various tribes into signing over their lands and rights. After this was completed the King officially took over the Congo, renaming it the Congo Free State. This was especially ironic because all natives of the country were either forced to give up their way of life in exchange for virtual slavery in the ivory trade, agriculture, or the rubber traffic, or die trying to escape fate. Leopold was undeterred by the amount of suffering and death in the Congo, brought on by his rule. Belgian soldiers and officials were known for their cruelty in their methods to make, and then keep, Congo natives wo...
The Hausa Kingdoms were a grouping of west African states that were located between Lake Chad to the west and the Niger River to the east. The African ethnic group which populated these kingdoms and the area in general from 700 AD are known as the Hausa people with one of the oldest kingdom being Daura located in modern-day northern Nigeria. The Hausa Kingdoms included Kano, Katsina, Zazzau, Gobir, Rano, Daura and Biram and were founded in 1000 AD. The kingdoms are also known as ‘Hausa Bakwai’ which means ‘Seven True Hausa States’. The language utilized by these Africans is also called Hausa. The written record of the Hausa people is contained in a document called the Kano Chronicle which focuses primarily on the Kano Kingdom. In addition to the seven primary Hausa Kingdoms there were a further seven satellite states named Kebbi, Yauri, Gwari, Nupe, Kororofa, Yoruba and Zamfara. The
Progressing from a combination of Arabic and Bantu, the Swahili language was developed as a tool for communication for trade amongst different people. When the Portuguese disembarked in the year 1498, the port of Mombasa became a major resupply stop for ships. During the 1600s, the Portuguese started dominating the Islamic religion under the sultan of Oman until another European barricade came along. Followed by the United Kingdom in the 19th century.
Nigeria had an eventful history. More than 2,000 years ago, the Nok culture in the present plateau state worked iron and produced experienced terracotta sculpture. The history of the northern cities of Kano and Katsina dates back to approximately 1000 A.D. In the following centuries, Hausa Kingdoms and the Bornu Empire became important terminals of north-south trade between North African Berbers and the forest people, exchanging slaves, ivory, and other products. The Yoruba Kingdom of Oyo was founded in 1400s. It attained a high level of political organization. In the 17th through 19th centuries, European traders established coastal ports for slave traffic to the Americas. Commodity trade, especially in palm oil and timber, replaced slave trade in the 19th century. In the early 19th century, the Fulani leader Usman dan Fodio launched an Islamic crusade that brought most of the Hausa states under the loose control of an empire centered in Sokoto.
On the second documentary on the Kingdoms of Africa, historian Gus Cacely-Hayford makes his way to the southern part of Africa to learn about the fierce kingdom of the Zulu Nation. He starts by saying that on January 22nd, 1879, 200 British troops were defeated by the Zulus as he was expressing how influential the Zulu nation was as they were one of the most powerful kingdoms in Africa. In the 1700’s, there was once a cattle farmer that had a vision on how to unite the neighboring chiefdoms and transformed it into a great empire, and his name was Shaka.