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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Beyond Decline: The Kingdom of the Kongo in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Author:Broadhead, Susan H.
Year:1979
Periodical:International Journal of African Historical Studies
Volume:12
Issue:4
Pages:615-650
Language:English
Geographic term:Angola
Subjects:history
Kongo polity
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
History and Exploration
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/218070
Abstract:In the years between 1709 and 1715 the kingdom of Kongo under Pedro IV emerged politically in its modern, precolonial form after two generations of uncertainty and change. The political system which operated for the next 175 years was characterised by great fluidity of structure, especially in the provinces where there was a tendency toward the multiplication of locally autonomous political units, a process the author calls the Kongo syndrome. This only marginally affected the kingdom in the eighteenth century because the nobles used the Christian cult and their control of the inland slave trade to maintain both that trade and their aristocratic life style. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, several changes, e.g. in international commerce, resulted in a disastrous weakening of the aristocracy and thus the Christian cult and the kingdom. By 1891 the kingdom was little more than a memory. Because these changes away from political centralisation have generally been viewed as negative, the political processes involved have never been analysed carefully nor examined historically. In fact the nature of the kingdom itself is far from clear. This is the focus of the present article. Maps, notes.
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