Beyond Decline: The Kingdom of the Kongo in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Abstract

In the years between 1709 and 1715 the kingdom of Kongo under Pedro IV emerged politically in its modem, precolonial form after two generations of uncertainty and change. The defeat in 1665 of Kongo armies under Ant6nio I by the Angolan Portuguese1 weakened the power of the dominant royal establishment at the capital, San Salvador (Mbanza Kongo), setting the stage for a showdown with its only internal rival, Mbanza Sonyo.2 A protracted struggle followed for control of the central institutions of the kingdom, during the course of which those institutions were dramatically altered from a strong, centralized monarchy based on a large urban center to a weak rural-based monarchy whose titular head was only primus interpares. By 1715 Pedro's occupation of the capital and his right to the kingship were widely accepted by the provincial nobility.3 The political system which operated for the next 175 years was characterized by great fluidity of structure, especially in the provinces where there was a tendency toward the multiplication of locally autonomous political units, a process which I have called Kongo syndrome.4 This only marginally affected the kingdom in the eighteenth century because as we shall see nobles used the Christian cult

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