The Kingdom of Kongo
An African kingdom adopts Christianity by choice and is unmade by the slave trade.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 165 years
- Known to
- ± 5 years
- Era
- Early Modern, Holocene
Kongo's ruler converts in 1491 and his son Afonso I builds a Christian kingdom with churches, literacy in Portuguese and diplomatic representation at Rome. Afonso's surviving letters to the Portuguese king protest that the slave trade is depopulating and destroying his country. The kingdom is progressively destabilised by that trade and by Portuguese intervention, and is defeated at Mbwila in 1665.