Modern research into oral tradition, including recording them in writing began in the 1910s with Mpetelo Boka and Lievan Sakala Boku writing in Kikongo and extended by Redemptorist missionaries like Jean Cuvelier and Joseph de Munck. In 1934, Cuvelier published a Kikongo language summary of these traditions in Nkutama a mvila za makanda.[16] Although Cuvelier and other scholars contended that these traditions applied to the earliest period of Kongo's history, it is more likely that they relate primarily to local traditions of clans makanda and especially to the period following 1750.[17][18]
By the time of the first recorded contact with the Europeans, the Kingdom of Kongo was sited at the centre of an extensive trading network. Apart from natural resources and ivory, the country manufactured and traded copperware, ferrous metal goods, raffia cloth, and pottery. The Kongo people spoke in the Kikongo language. The eastern regions, especially that part known as the Seven Kingdoms of Kongo dia Nlaza, were particularly famous for the production of cloth.
The Kongo church was always short of ordained clergy and made up for it by the employment of a strong laity. Kongolese school teachers or mestres (Kikongo alongi a aleke) were the anchor of this system. Recruited from the nobility and trained in the kingdom's schools, they provided religious instruction and services to others building upon Kongo's growing Christian population. At the same time, they permitted the growth of syncretic forms of Christianity which incorporated older religious ideas with Christian ones. Examples of this are the introduction of KiKongo words to translate Christian concepts. The KiKongo words ukisi (an abstract word meaning charm, but used to mean "holy") and nkanda (meaning book) were merged so that the Christian Bible became known as the nkanda ukisi (holy book). The church became known as the nzo a ukisi (holy house). While some European clergy often denounced these mixed traditions, they were never able to root them out.[35]
A great deal is known about how such struggles took place from the contest that followed Afonso's death in late 1542 or early 1543. This is in large part due to a detailed inquest conducted by royal officials in 1550, which survives in the Portuguese archives. In this inquest, one can see that factions formed behind prominent men, such as Afonso I's son, Pedro Nkanga a Mvemba and Diogo Nkumbi a Mpudi, his grandson who ultimately overthrew Pedro in 1545. Although the factions placed themselves in the idiom of kinship (using the Portuguese term geração or lineage, probably kanda in Kikongo) they were not formed strictly along heredity lines since close kin were often in separate factions. The players included nobles holding appointive titles to provincial governorships, members of the royal council and also officials in the now well-developed Church hierarchy.
Following its success in Nambu a Ngongo, the Portuguese army advanced into Mbamba in November. The Portuguese forces scored a victory at the Battle of Mbumbi. There they faced a quickly gathered local force led by the new Duke of Mbamba, and reinforced by forces from Mpemba led by its marquis. Both the Duke of Mbamba and the Marquis of Mpemba were killed in the battle. According to Esikongo accounts, they were eaten by the Imbangala allies of the Portuguese. However, Pedro II, the newly crowned king of Kongo, brought the main army, including troops from Soyo, down into Mbamba and decisively defeated the Portuguese, driving them from the country at a battle waged somewhere near Mbanda Kasi in January 1623. Portuguese residents of Kongo, frightened by the consequences for their business of the invasion, wrote a hostile letter to Correia de Sousa, denouncing his invasion.
The king of Kongo also held several kingdoms in at least nominal vassalage. These included the kingdoms of Kakongo, Ngoyo and Vungu to the north of Kongo. The royal titles, first elaborated by Afonso in 1512, styled the ruler as "King of Kongo and Lord of the Mbundus" and later titles listed a number of other counties over which he also ruled as "king". The Mbundu kingdoms included Ndongo (sometimes erroneously mentioned as "Angola"), Kisama and Matamba. All of these kingdoms were south of Kongo and much farther from the king's cultural influence than the northern kingdoms. Still later eastern kingdoms such as Kongo dia Nlaza were named in the ruler's titles as well.[citation needed]
Provincial governors paid a portion of the tax returns from their provinces to the king. Dutch visitors to Kongo in the 1640s reported this income as twenty million nzimbu shells. In addition, the crown collected its own special taxes and levies, including tolls on the substantial trade that passed through the kingdom, especially the lucrative cloth trade between the great cloth-producing region of the "Seven Kingdoms of Kongo dia Nlaza", the eastern regions (also called "Momboares"), "The Seven" in Kikongo, and the coast, especially the Portuguese colony of Luanda.[citation needed]
The people of the Kongo are divided into many subgroups including the Yombe, Beembe, Sundi, and others but share a common language, Kikongo. These groups have many cultural similarities, including that they all produce a huge range of sculptural art. The most notable feature of this region's figurative style is the relative naturalism of the representation of both humans and animals. "The musculature of face and body is carefully rendered, and great attention is paid to items of personal adornment and scarification. Much of the region's art was produced for social and political leaders such as the Kongo king."[76]
History states that the kingdom was founded by Nimi a Lukeni, also known as Lukeni Lua Nimi. The kingdom developed through multiple migrations from the 7th to the 15th century until the arrival of Portuguese. Prior to the Portuguese arrival, Kongo was developed with a large commercial network. The kingdom melted copper and gold and traded it with products such as raffia cloth and pottery. The kingdom was a superpower and center of trade routes for ivory, copper, raffia cloth, and pottery. Yet, 1483 marked the beginning of the kingdom's decline with the arrival of Diogo Cão who sailed the coast of Africa to claim the divine right of Portugal on African lands. However, in 14521, it is said that a prophet in the kingdom may have predicated Portuguese arrival, and the physical and spiritual enslavement of the Bakongo2. Nevertheless, Diogo met a prosperous and powerful kingdom as shown in Figure 1.
Social and educational training: The Bakongo engaged in agriculture, hunting, and breeding. Bakongo also learned a trade of their choice by enrolling into one of the prestigious schools, among which the most famous included Kimpasi, Kinkimba, Buelo, and Lemba. These schools were designed to train elites in the kingdom, and although enrollment was opened to any Bakongo, students had to go through initiation ceremonies with strict criteria of selection. Portuguese and other European explorers, who did not understand anything about the culture or the kingdom, labeled these schools secret societies.
Kingship was not hereditary among the Bakongo, which means that any citizen of the kingdom of Kongo, that is any Mukongo, could be elected king. The kingdom had 12 provinces, headed by 12 governors nominated by the king. These provinces were Soyo, Ngoyo, Kakono, Loango, Mpumbu, Matamba, Ndongo, Nsundi, Mbamba, Mpemba, Mpangu, and Mbata.3
Writings on the kingdom of Kongo often point to the artistic abilities of the Bakongo. However, the focus on the artistic skills overshadows the technological advancement, design, and fashion style displayed in these art works.
Yet, to transform raphia and pineapple fibers into textile formats and structures requires ingenuity, techniques, and technologies. Bakongo had surely invented technologies that allowed them to work on this material (see Figures 2, 3 and 4).
Figure 5 and Figure 6 represent two females seated. Yet, a close look at these works of art reveals that the artists also represented the garment these Bakongo women wore. Probably made of pineapple fiber, the design gives insights into the fashion style and taste of Bakongo and particularly Bakongo women.
The design on the shoulders and back of this woman are different from the one above. She is also wearing a cut pile hat, and a necklace. Both figures are a demonstration of Bakongo women's fashion, taste, and style.
Written symbols, religious objects, oral traditions, and body language have long been integrated into the Kongo system of graphic writing of the Bakongo people in Central Africa as well as their Cuban descendants. The comprehensive Kongo Graphic Writing and Other Narratives of the Sign provides a significant overview of the social, religious, and historical contexts in which the Kongo kingdom developed and spread to the Caribbean.
Author Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz, a practitioner of the Palo Monte devotional arts, illustrates with graphics and rock art how the Bakongo's ideographic and pictographic signs are used to organize daily life, enable interactions between humans and the natural and spiritual worlds, and preserve and transmit cosmological and cosmogonical belief systems.
Exploring cultural diffusion and exchange, collective memory and identity, Kongo Graphic Writing and Other Narratives of the Sign artfully brings together analyses of the complex interconnections among Kongo traditions of religion, philosophy, and visual/gestural communication on both sides of the African-Atlantic world.
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