When many people think of Africa, they visualise wide open spaces, incredible wildlife and colourful friendly people with vibrant cultures, costumes and music. We might also contemplate the tragedy of the African slave trade and the consequences of colonialism. But what if I told you there was one powerful African kingdom in particular, that, when they first came into contact with Europeans, voluntarily and enthusiastically transformed their entire civilisation almost overnight– adopting the language, religion, fashion and even feudal aristocratic customs of the Portuguese, establishing diplomatic embassies in Lisbon, Madrid and even the Vatican, training their own clergy and corresponding regularly with popes and monarchs across Europe as well as participating in the political machinations of a post-renaissance Europe at war with itself. Though their story ultimately was to come to a tragic end, it was full of political intrigue, amazon warrior queens, and a quest for power that was integral to the History of the West, particularly in the Americas, which was inexorably linked to the kingdom’s rise and fall. If you’re just a little bit curious about this powerful, deeply catholic kingdom in the darkest heart of Africa, then join us as we dive into the history of the Kingdom of Kongo; its troubled relationship with Portugal and its tragic role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade; whose incredible heroes would go on to inspire generations of their descendants, with stories of mighty Amazon warrior queens; and tales of the Brazilian Black Spartacus and his renegade kingdom of Palmares.
#congo #history #portugal #africa #zumbidospalmares #palmares #brazil #gangazumba #Njinga #Nzinga #africanqueen
All footage used in this montage is for educational purposes. It remains the property of its respective creators, and is gratefully acknowledged in the end credits. Copyright Disclaimer- under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favour of fair use. Please contact us on info@heroesandlegends.com.au if you have any concerns about its use.
If you enjoy my content, leave your suggestions and comments below, and please consider making a donation via the heart-shaped Thanks link on your Youtube screen; via PayPal; or why not sign up as a Patreon supporter to help me continue making these unfunded free educational videos:
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=4D958V58PAVDU
https://www.patreon.com/heroesandlegends
https://buymeacoffee.com/infoQh
For an audio-narration only version of this video please visit the Heroes and Legends Documentary Channel Podcast, via Spotify, Itunes or other leading broadcasters.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1989195
For resources, links to my other videos, merchandise, the latest social media posts and podcast links, please visit my Heroes and Legends Website: www.heroesandlegends.com.au
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100081972147936
https://www.instagram.com/heroesandlegendsdocumentary/
@heroes.and.legends
when many people think of Africa they
visualize Wide Open Spaces incredible
wildlife and colorful friendly people
with vibrant cultures costumes and
music but we might also contemplate the
tragedy of the African slave trade and
the consequences of
colonialism what if I told you there was
one powerful African Kingdom in
particular that when they first came
into contact with Europeans voluntarily
and enthusiastically transformed their
entire civilization almost overnight
adopting the language religion fashion
and even feudal aristocratic customs of
the Portuguese establishing diplomatic
embassies in Lisbon Madrid and even the
Vatican training their own clergy and
corresponding regularly with popes and
monarchs across Europe as well as
particip ipating in the political
minations of a post Renaissance Europe
at war with
itself though their story ultimately was
to come to a tragic end it was full of
political Intrigue Amazon warrier queens
and a quest for power that was integral
to the history of the West particularly
the Americas which was inexorably linked
to the Kingdom’s rise and
fall if you’re just a little bit curious
about this powerful deeply Catholic
Kingdom in the darkest heart of Africa
then join us as we dive into the history
of the kingdom of Congo its troubled
relationship with Portugal and its
tragic role in the transatlantic slave
trade whose incredible Heroes would go
on to inspire generations of their
descendants with stories of warrior
queens and tales of the Brazilian black
SP baracus and his Renegade
[Music]
Kingdom Our Story begins in the early
1400s the barbery Pirates of North
Africa had long been raiding the
Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of
Europe plundering towns and Villages all
the way to Ireland enlightening raids
with their fast galys that over the
course of hundreds of years had seen
them take over a million slaves back to
markets throughout their strongholds in
the
mreb European monarchs had long been
trying to neutralize them unsuccessfully
and their star for now was still rising
to yet see its Zenith in the powerful
ottoman forces headed by hudin Barbarosa
through the 16th
century but for now young Portuguese
Prince Henry known to us today as the
Navigator the fourth son of King Jah I
first of Portugal and an aid Maritime
scholar was dreaming about striking back
at the Enemy by taking the fight to them
on their own home
turf now there was a legend that that
had been propagated since the 12th
century of a lost kingdom of Christians
somewhere in the East ruled by a mighty
and Wealthy King called prester John
supposedly a descendant of one of the
three Magi who visited the newborn
Christ in Bethlehem a thousand years
before this kingdom was thought
originally to be located in India what
little the West knew about it at the
time based largely on apocryphal stories
about the disciple Thomas founding a
Christian Enclave there indeed as the
Crusader present in the Holy Land began
to crumble under the onslaught of
Islamic expansion stories circulated of
King prester John sending word that he
was on his way with a mighty Army to
relieve the besieged Crusaders and help
once again liberate Jerusalem for
Christ as We Know this relief Force
never materialized yet stories continued
to circulate for decades that he had
nevertheless liberated Persia and was
now on his way to take
Baghdad Muslim armies were indeed being
crushed by a mighty king but it was not
the Christian prester John but rather
genas Khan who was now the scourge of
the Islamic
world how did he get confused fused with
prestor John well it turns out that when
our old mate genus was a vulnerable
teenager he had at one time been under
the care of a foster father who just
happened to be a nestorian Christian KH
of the kerite
clan the kites were a turkic Central
Asian tribe who had adopted Christianity
in the 11th century nestorians were a
heretical sect who believed in the Dual
nature of Christ that is to say they
claimed he had both a human and a divine
nature which established church doctrine
dismissed in favor of a single unified
nature despite their condemnation the
church was hardly in a position to
police the Mongol steps and so the sect
flourished there for some
time anyway the KH had promised his
niece as a bride to the young temoin who
in time would go on to become the gengas
Khan we all know and
love but the two eventually fell out and
the khah reneged on his promise to
present said bride to the expectant
groom to be bad
mistake within a couple of years the
intractable Christian khah was singing
soprano with the angels and genas got
his new misses after
all somehow these Tales of a Christian
KH morphed into various confusing and
unrelated stories woven by crusading
knights in the Levant with the legend of
a mighty Christian khah in the East
gaining ever more
traction when it became obvious that the
dread Mongol KH was anything but
Christian rumors about the location of
this exotic prestor John Kingdom began
to shift from Central Asia towards
Sahara in Africa instead with various
contenders such as abisinia and Ethiopia
being considered as candidate
homelands at the time these domains were
thought to extend right across Sahara
and Africa and given the onslaught of
Islamic expansion throughout the
Mediterranean Southern European states
in the firing line became ever more
desperate to link up with this Christian
King sending spies and envoys into North
Africa hoping to make
contact Portugal was among the most
active of these and it seems that Henry
the Navigator developed a particular
obsession with the
fantasy at the age of 21 he convinced
the king and his other brothers to
attack the barbery city of seuta on the
Moroccan Coast which his agents had told
him was a huge clearing market for
slaves brought in both from their
European raids as well trade routes
Coming Out of subsaharan
Africa stories abounded of their
incredible gold Ivory and slave hordes
being brought North to the Mediterranean
via Caravans from the legendary Empire
of Marley so by taking sauta he was
hoping they could tap into the network
and maybe also use it to get their
agents more easily to prester John’s
Kingdom so it was that in August
1415 the Portuguese sent an
expeditionary Armada that having just
assembled in the sua harbor was
scattered by a fierce storm causing them
to raise anchor and head back out to sea
again before they could properly engage
the well-entrenched Muslim
Defenders the governor of the city
thinking that the enemy had abandoned
their plans dispersed his troops and
conscripts but when the fleet having
regrouped returned a week or so later he
was now left with only a modest Garrison
and the Citadel was taken with Little
Resistance and has remained in European
hands ever
since in the aftermath the marinated
Sultan of Fez over in Morocco was
assassinated for failing to defend the
Fortress and the region then descended
into Civil War as rival factions fought
for
control this at least meant that sea
remained relatively unmolested for many
years giving it an opportunity to
fortify and repel the modest attacks of
local
Warlords but Henry’s hope for cashing in
on the subsaharan Trade Network came to
nothing as the Caravans simply
redirected to Tangier instead denying
the prince the Honeypot he was hoping
for so he convinced his brothers to have
a crack at Tangier as well but this city
was an altogether different stronghold
the Portuguese attack ending in complete
disaster nevertheless for the time being
the European presence on the North
African Coast threw a spanner in the
works stifling Islamic raiding for some
time and making shipping lanes through
the Straits of jalter much safer for
European
traffic but Henry was going to have to
find another way to get his hands on all
that southern
treasure there was nothing for it but to
try and sail around the other way and
see how far they could
go he now began obsessively acquiring
maps and charts and some believe that he
even developed a kind of Naval Academy
that focused on improving navigation
chart making and and ship design drawing
from the Innovations of both Muslim and
Christian sailing
Traditions he sponsored the exploration
of the Atlantic Ocean in redesigned
shallow bottom Caravel ships with latine
sails that were highly maneuverable and
whose Arrangement allowed them to sail
into headwinds as well as Ena them to
hug the coast more
closely Portuguese Sailors had by now
discovered h huge Ocean Air GS and
currents that actually made it more
efficient if counterintuitive to sail
way out to sea perpendicular to the
winds that we now call the northeasterly
trades and then ride the clockwise turn
of the Winds as they became the
southwesterlies that would now be at
their backs as they approached the
Iberian coast once
more this turn of the breeze was known
as the Volta doar and and it enabled the
Portuguese Navy to strike out with
confidence across vast expanses of ocean
and predict the likely wind direction
based on their
latitude using this revolutionary new
knowledge Intrepid Portuguese explorers
discovered the madaran islands the Azor
and even the saraso
sea some evidence also suggests that by
the 1420s they probably also ran into
the Caribbean and possibly even the
mainland of both North and South America
such that Christopher Columbus had
eventually availed himself of both maps
and knowledge he extracted from dying
Portuguese Sailors on Madera see my
video on the codfish Heroes for a full
account of this and other incredible
stories of pre-colombian
Crossings anyway as confidence increased
and the fog of obscurity gradually
retreated Prince Henry sponsored dozens
of expeditions that penetrated ever
further southwards too passing the
southern edge of the Sahara by
1444 and the Capa Verde Islands by the
early
1450s making contact with local
Chieftain and setting up a number of
trading posts that bypassed the Muslim
land Caravans and dealt directly with
sources of ivory gold and now also
slaves gold began pouring into Lisbon
and the North African trading hubs of
alers and Tunis found themselves
devastated by the loss of trade via this
new Portuguese Atlantic trade route
which bypassed the traditional desert
crossings that had been used by Muslim
merchants for
Centuries by
1488 barolo Diaz had rounded the Cape of
Good Hope and the very next year Vasco
deama was the first European to sail to
India via this new African
route from this point on the Islamic
world’s grip on power would never be the
same again and Portugal would soon
become a maritime superpower to be
unrivaled for
centuries now a few years before d as as
daring foray to the cape another
Portuguese Trailblazer by the name of
Dio CA had also made his way South
hugging the African coast and in
1483 he disembarked at a
well-established and clearly powerful
Kingdom called Congo whose domains
extended over 100,000 square
kilm roughly covering Northern Angola
and the Western portions of the Congo
republics of
today traditional history holds that the
region surrounding the Congo River Esty
was originally occupied by numerous
minor kingdoms but by the late 14th
century the balance of power began to
shift when two of them the imata and
impemba formed an alliance and began
expanding into neighboring territories
annexing some and subjugating others
into vassel
dependencies when these two kingdoms
were ultimately merged through a royal
marriage the kingdom of Congo was
formerly proclaimed in about
1375 with its capital at Iman cono in
today’s northern
Angola subordinate vassel kingdoms were
eventually absorbed as provinces of the
greater Congo whose population at the
time had reached 3/4 of a million sub
objects to give you some perspective
London one of the largest cities in
Europe at the time had roughly 50,000
inhabitants and with outbreaks of the
Black Death it occasionally dropped
significantly below
that the highly centralized state of
Congo had an extensive Trade Network all
along the western Seaboard producing
cloth copper and iron Goods Pottery
Ivory ornate jewelry
and was trading in gold and slaves
captured as prisoners of war from their
many wars of
expansion when Diogo cow stepped ashore
a century later in
1483 they were warmly received by the
ambitious King in Singa
anuu who had no doubt already received
for warning of the European arrival in
the region by his extensive
communication
Network the King was Keen to gain even
more leverage over his rival neighbors
by establishing friendly relations with
the Europeans treating them with great
Hospitality at his Royal
Court Doo cow soon returned to Lisbon
leaving a number of his left tenants
behind as tutors while the king himself
sent a delegation of his own nobles back
with him who spent the next couple of
years in Portugal establishing an
embassy there and taking instruction in
the language religion and culture of the
Portuguese Court in
return in this Mission the ambitious and
Progressive African king also requested
the Portuguese Monarch to send
Architects Masons and Scholars and to
instruct them in European methods of
warfare so when the emissaries returned
home in
1491 they were fluent in the language
and were indeed accompanied by a sth of
Portuguese Builders priests and soldiers
who were given quarters and even wages
by the congales Royal
Court the King was so Keen to transform
his realm that he decided to be baptized
adopting a Christian name in honor of
the current Portuguese King
Jah his Queen and many Nobles soon
followed suit and they now instigated
the building of churches across the
entire country even transforming the
traditional organization of Congo
Society along a feudal European model
with titles Rank and Estates akin to
those of
Portugal his courtiers adapted to the
sweeping changes astonishingly quickly
with King XA even sending an embassy to
the Pope in Rome and requesting the
pontiff to establish a completely new
African bishoprick centered in his
capital
their new friends the Portuguese were
soon requested to assist the king in his
military
Adventures offering detachments of their
troops and arabas to help quell
provincial insurrections and intercept
Raiders from neighboring territories
sometimes taking many prisoners in the
process who were by local custom
typically
enslaved most of the captives per
purchased by the Portuguese at this time
actually ended up in Lisbon working on
local Estates which had been severely
depopulated by both the plague and the
Reconquista now sugar cane was first
cultivated in Southeast Asia over 8,000
years ago it eventually made its way
into the Indian subcontinent and was
then brought into the Mediterranean by
Arab merchants in the 9th century
ad Muslim expansion into Cyprus cre
Sicily and then the Iberian Peninsula
brought it onto climactically suitable
newly conquered territories where its
cultivation was practiced on large
Estates worked by turkic Bulan and
Mediterranean
slaves genoise and Venetian Merchants
described the practice in some detail so
that when the Portuguese opened their
first sugar Plantation on the island of
Madera in
1432 they simply copied Muslim
Plantation practices that had been going
on for 600 years
already once they and the Spanish began
colonizing the new world they found
conditions perfect for growing sugar
cane here too so demand for a local
cheap labor force increased
significantly when King XA of Congo died
in
1509 the realm descended for a short
time into a period of Civil War you see
despite a feudal baronial system similar
in many respects to that of the
Europeans the kingship of Congo was an
elective not hereditary
title so the ongoing support of the
nobility for key candidates was
necessary above and beyond claims of
lineage and and
primogeniture such that Civil Wars
following the death of a king were a
disruptive though normal and recurring
practice moreover from time to time
rival factions would attempt to break
off and Ally their domains with others
often engaging mercenaries from outside
territories and now increasingly
Portuguese client adventurers who found
themselves on the payroll of not only
the sitting King but frequently also his
insubordinate
Nobles Portuguese diplomats had been
granted a number of outposts from which
to conduct their Mercantile
activities with taxes tolls and duties
to be paid both to the regional Warlords
in whose domains they were located as
well as to the king as head of state who
held the ultimate Monopoly on local
trade so when the Monarch came into
conflict with his own Barons the
Portuguese in the various settlements of
saome Principe and others on the
mainland often found themselves being
drafted in to fight on opposite
sides some of these settlers indeed
became so wealthy and so influential
that they became key figures in the
congales court intermarrying with the
local nobility and often holding social
titles above that of the Portuguese
officials that were dispatched to to
oversee the
outposts such that the king of Portugal
increasingly found himself subject to a
flurry of complaint letters from his own
merchants of those assimilated into the
congales court as well as frequently
from the congales King himself all
complaining about the encroachment on
their rights and privileges to one
degree or another but all of them
involved in a Mack ofan game of one
upmanship to secure a power and trade
benefits for
themselves the Portuguese Crown was more
often than not content to let them all
fight it out amongst themselves as long
as trade continued to flow to
Lisbon after his death King jah’s son
aonso nevertheless won out in the
ensuing conflict and took over the
Reigns of the Kingdom in
1509 becoming an even more fervent
missionary than his father father forly
establishing Christianity as the state
religion maintaining a regular
correspondence with the Pope and even
sending his son Prince Enrique to Rome
who returned some years later to become
the chief Bishop of the burgeoning
congales
church the Royal Court adopted the
fashion etiquette and customs of Europe
and one of its ambassadors in Lisbon
even married into the Portuguese royal
family
King aonso instigated a vigorous program
of building schools across his domains
training local teachers to become fluent
in Latin Portuguese and even Italian and
having congales converts undergo
training as priests under the tutelage
of both Portuguese and Vatican
missionaries he even commissioned a
European style coat of arms that would
be used by all future rulers till the
dissolution of the kingdom in the early
20th
century it’s clear that both the king
and the Portuguese officials who resided
in his realm viewed their relationship
to Europeans as one of equals their well
documented correspondence back home
typically reflects their deference to
him even when they were unhappy with
their
circumstances while the Portuguese were
busy establishing tra settlements up and
down the coast of Africa over on the
other side of the Atlantic the Spanish
whose Maritime exploits were being left
in the Dust by their lucanian
cousins nevertheless pulled off a major
coup when Christopher Columbus claimed
the new world for Spain in
1492 thumbing his nose at the Portuguese
Court the political chaos it triggered
between Spain and the Portuguese
who had previously been given full title
over the Atlantic Ocean by a Papal
decree almost ended in war but
eventually resulted in a compromise in
1494 called the Treaty of tesas which
gave the Spanish Crown all lands roughly
to the west of the 24th Meridian while
Portugal retained the rights to
everything east of
it the poor old French despite being
Catholic were completely sidelined by
the pope as were the Protestant English
so they simply ignored the treaty all
together and scrambled to get a foothold
wherever they
could when Pedro Alvarez cabal landed a
Portuguese exploration Fleet off the
coast of modern Brazil in 1500 he
claimed it for the Portuguese Crown
given that it lay within the Portuguese
Meridian of
possession the the region quickly became
an important source of Timber and dye
from a local tree known as Brazil wood
and it’s from this tree that the modern
country derives its
name by
1516 the Portuguese had established a
number of trading ports along the
Brazilian Coast to export the Timber and
like their Spanish counterparts further
north in the Caribbean they largely
depended on the labor of local
indigenous people who at first
voluntarily aided the Europeans in
exchange for axes metal tools and
Military Support against rival
Clans these Native Americans all
practiced tribal Warfare also enslaving
their conquered
neighbors as the Portuguese began
establishing permanent settlements on
the Brazilian Coast native raiding
parties soon included European Fortune
Hunter Hunters called vantes who now
claimed a proportion of the captured
enemies for themselves as payment for
their assistance and these captives were
then put to work on new Portuguese farms
and sugar
plantations the bantes developed a
notorious reputation not only for their
cruelty but also treachery for
undermining the missionary work of
groups like the Jesuits whose indigenous
congregations were often raided by them
despite the protests of Parish priests
to the crown back home remember these
Scoundrels because we’ll get back to
them
later of course other Europeans were
Keen to get in on the action and the
French who as mentioned were left out of
the papal treaty altogether ignored the
papal mandate and sent out a number of
expeditions of their own to parts of the
Brazilian Mainland including Rio de
Janeiro
but the Portuguese Crown paranoid about
French adventurism dispatched an armada
to dislodge them and formalized
possession of Brazil by establishing
permanent settlements along the entire
Coast these settlements rapidly
transformed into sugar producing
factories so many more slaves were
needed than could easily and cheaply be
acquired through raiding the dense
forests of the Brazilian Hinterland in
response the Portuguese demand for
captives back over in Congo now their
Chief source of Manpower intensified
substantially which fueled Congo’s
Foreign Wars of expansion both to the
North and the
South Portuguese captains now also
occasionally conducted raids of their
own sometimes at the behest of local
Warlords and at other times completely
on their own initiative
so many captives and cash began to flow
into the capital now renamed sou
Salvador that the king of Congo wrote
numerous letters to the Portuguese Court
complaining about Maverick European
Merchants who were operating without due
oversight or appropriate payment of
export tariffs to his
treasury he had after all signed a
treaty with Portugal guaranteeing that
he had a person Al Monopoly on all slave
trade passing out of his
domains and he even threatened to end
the trade when increasing numbers of his
own citizens deeply in debt because of
their demand for European goods were
occasionally seized by creditors and
themselves sold into slavery to pay
their
debts historians generally agree that
trade with the Europeans was hardly
balanced and that the scales were used
usually tipped in the Portuguese favor
which made it common for locals to
quickly fall into serious debt where
their cowy shell currency was worthless
but the thing was that technically
speaking the congales citizens were
obliged to purchase their much desired
European Goods only through the king’s
personal Customs agents and hence pay
him import
duty but when as people do they
eventually began to bypass his tax
collectors and buy Goods
dutyfree he lost control of his own
import Revenue while Traders frequently
sent in debt collectors to take care of
business had the king managed to keep a
tighter grip on Imports it might have
stabilized his ballooning account
deficit but once people found themselves
subject to creditors despite laws to the
contrary congales citizens regularly
sold their own kin into slavery
especially during an economic crisis to
pay off their debts and even the king
himself was reported to have dealt with
Troublesome family members and rival
candidates by shall we say having them
sold down the river in ways reminiscent
of the biblical Joseph and his technical
Dream
Coat the same thing frequently happened
in Europe and Asia also especially among
the poor so this was hardly an unusual
situation now when King aonso eventually
died of old age in about
1543 he had been on the throne for over
50 years and despite his regular letters
of Complaint to Lisbon he had
nevertheless profited enormously from
the relationship both through the
trading of slaves and the expansion of
his territory in the process now with
the help help of Portuguese
Firepower indeed it’s estimated that
between a third to half of the
inhabitants of the western Congo Basin
were sold into slavery during The Next
Century far too many to have been the
result of marauding Portuguese
conquistadors this is because European
mercenaries in this part of Africa
rarely ventured more than a few kilom
Inland the reason for this was the
widespread presence of malaria and other
endemic diseases that were much less
prevalent at the coast than they were up
River some historians have estimated
that the average European survived less
than 6 months in that environment so
they mostly relied on locals to do the
Dirty Work of raiding outlying
tribes while the kingdom maintained a
traditional cowy shell currency for its
own domestic trade international
business quickly came to be be conducted
in human currency with the King paying
tithes to the bishop of saom in slaves
as indeed he did to other European and
African States who soon also adopted the
practice despite this Grim picture
subsequent congales Kings would take the
matter of citizens rights somewhat more
seriously particularly when factional
power changed hands with correspondence
to Europe occasionally including
petitions for a number of high-born
slaves sold by the previous Monarch to
be repatriated from even as far away as
Brazil Portuguese and later Spanish
Royal court documents exist showing a
willingness and significant effort made
to comply with these diplomatic
requests alonso’s son Pedro assumed the
throne on his father’s death but he was
soon overthrown in a coup led by his own
nephew who crowned himself Dogo I
first the deposed Pedro fled to a local
church with the usurper fearing a
backlash if he breached the church’s
strict rules of sanctuary so seriously
did they consider their Catholic
vows instead he isolated both Pedro’s
supporters and the capucin order that
was loyal to him soon replacing them
with
Jesuits but when the Jesuit hierarchy
complained about the propriety of his
having so many wives King Dogo booted
them as well and replaced the Jesuits in
turn with franciscans who pretty much
stayed out of his hair and instead
concentrated on missionary work in rural
areas now don’t get me wrong King Diogo
was no apostate he was a firm advocate
of Christian teachings and was widely
regarded as quite the biblical scholar
expanding missionary activity even
Beyond Congo’s own political borders
it’s just that he saw no justification
in the gospels for the ridiculous idea
of keeping only one wife for a mighty
ruler like himself it just wasn’t
honorable only losers had one
wife anyway King diogo’s Reign continued
much like his grandfather’s with
increasing incursions into neighboring
territories assisted by contingents of
heavily armored Portuguese soldiers as
was by now usual paid for their service
in captive prisoners of
War his successor Alonso II was
assassinated by rival conspirators and
when the next candidate Bernardo I
ascended the throne he met his end
during an invasion by a powerful Eastern
neighbor the jagas or yakas who perhaps
feeling threatened by Congo’s
expansionist agenda launched a
preemptive Invasion and devastated much
of the Kingdom’s agricultural lands
causing a famine and corresponding
economic
catastrophe his successor Enrique I
fared little better and as neighboring
kingdoms began to to feel increasingly
threatened cracks began to appear in the
once Mighty
Kingdom the next Monarch Alvaro I
ascended the throne at this time of
great crisis even being forced to
evacuate his Capital sou Salvador which
was sacked by the invading
Jaggers he desperately wrote to both the
Portuguese king and the Vatican for
support for which king sebastia the the
first of Portugal sent 600 soldiers in
support of Congo’s defense on condition
that Congo not oppose the establishment
of a new Trading Post South of the
country at leanda which occurred in
1575 and would go on to become the
capital of modern-day
Angola the Allied Forces eventually
overcame the invading Jaggers but a
client state to Congo’s South which had
long been lobbying for Independence and
had even sent emissaries to Lisbon to
Garner support offered to become
Christians if they were assisted in
winning their
freedom careful not to upset their Ally
in Congo the Portuguese only dispatched
a delegation of missionaries but these
efforts came to nothing and when
conflict inevitably arose as a result of
a weakened post-war Congo the Portuguese
reinforced their allies and gained some
territory for themselves from the now
rebelling state of indongo during the
conflict it was far from a cakewalk
however and in a number of separate
engagements the Portuguese found
themselves surrounded and thoroughly
thrashed as were their allies with King
Alvaro having to face the reality of
indongo complete Independence and
eventually even see some territory to
them the situation remained a tense
standoff with none of the players able
to take the initiative until the
Portuguese in
1617 managed to entice a nomadic group
of marauding cannibal Warriors known as
the imbangala to join their side and
together they penetrated deeper into
indan territory along the Quanza and
lucala rivers cutting off indan Supply
Lin lines and capturing its capital
taking thousands of prisoners and
crippling the newly independent
state now you’d think King Alvaro would
have been relieved at the victory but
this Portuguese use of initiative and
their recruitment of African mercenaries
without his consultation or consent
didn’t sit well with him and the King’s
relationship with the Portuguese
military commander subsequently became
strained the congales were concerned
that all this independent diplomacy
might eventually be used against them
too it didn’t help matters when all
these new indangan war captives were
being shipped out of the new port in
Luanda totally bypassing congales
Customs officials and denying the king
much needed Revenue he felt he was duly
entitled
to but with his army depleted by the
indangan Rebellion he was in no position
to dictate terms to the Portuguese who
had now begun to fortify their southern
outposts against both the congales and
the remaining
indong the latter were eventually forced
to accept vassalage to Portugal when
Queen inj Jinga who was acting as Regent
for her nephew had the boy King
conveniently disposed of and then person
Ally approached the Portuguese governor
with a peace treaty of her own in
1621 negotiations stalled however
because she insisted on the release of a
number of her own vassals but the
Portuguese Governor feared doing so
might lead to an Insurrection which
occurred anyway and war with the indonga
with Queen in Jinga at its head resumed
in
1626 the Portuguese by now were well
entrenched and they easily defeated her
forces forcing her into Exile and
installing a puppet ruler in
herstead Congo too was now facing
internal problems of its own and when
Alvaro the first son died his son
Bernardo II was soon deposed and a civil
war broke out once again among rival
claimants Queen in Jingo raised another
Army to 2 years later and once again
Advanced on Portuguese possessions but
yet again was defeated and fled to the
neighboring kasanji Province where she
humiliatingly submitted to Marrying an
imbangala cannibal warlord who in return
for his support claimed her throne by
right of
marriage the imbangala being stateless
as well as cannibals were treated with
disdain by the more civilized ized
kingdoms but their highly militarized
meritocratic hierarchy and Spartan likee
focus on martial prowess made them
feared as Warriors so Queen in Jinga saw
them as a useful vehicle to regain her
own
kingdom ingratiating herself into their
Sinister blood drinking culture was the
price she had to pay to achieve her
ends now all all this was going on at a
time when Portugal’s own fortunes were
far from Stellar you see in 1580 it had
become subject to the Iberian Union when
young Portuguese King sebastio was
killed in the battle of the Three Kings
or alcasser quir in
1578 if you recall the Portuguese had in
1415 managed to rest control of the
small Fortress of sauta from the
Moroccan Sultan on the North African
Coast this victory was a hollow one with
little profit to be had from it while
successive devastating victories by
ottoman commanders such as Barbarosa
discouraged them from any further
Eastward forays in the Mediterranean for
the time being instead they turned all
their attention to the Atlantic West
Coast gradually making their Way South
probing for Muslim weaknesses that would
afford them a continental foothold and
opportunities to again access the trans
Sahara and trade
Caravans eventually they managed to
subjugate the coastal ports of kar El
seir in
1458 Aila and tangia in
1471 Azore in 1486 and Safi in
1488 and thereby virtually blockading
all of Morocco’s Maritime
trade things were looking shaky for the
Berber wcid Dynasty ruling out of Fez
and when in
1505 the Portuguese managed to conquer
the Atlantic Coastal Fortress of agadir
adjacent to the Canary Islands a
political crisis blew up in
response you see much of the southern
part of the country was governed by an
Arab Saudi Shar Rey Dynasty that traced
its lineage right back to the prophet
himself and though nominally vassals of
the Burber Sultan in the north they took
upon themselves the holy task of
expelling the infidels from their
ancestral lands but in reality they
ended up having more success only
displacing the current watd Sultan who
was increasingly being viewed as
incompetent such that by 1550 they had
occupied most of the country’s major
interior cities and forced the
abdication of its current
Sultan the Portuguese saw the writing on
the wall and evacuated the northern
ports of Karis seir and Aila before the
new ruler Muhammad al- shake or the
Ottomans dislodged
them it should be said though that there
was no love lost between this new Sultan
and the encroaching Ottomans who had
absorbed pretty much the entire North
African Coast into their expanding
Empire the Turks Keen to tie up this
loose end approached the Moroccans and
demanded their submission but the new
Sultan a proper old school Muslim was
having none of it and so Muhammad al-
shake and sulan the Magnificent now
found themselves in a Mexican or should
I say mban
standoff battles raged across the entire
country cities fell and were retaken
again as the Moroccans fought tooth and
nail against both the Ottomans and
factions of the preceding
Dynasty in yet another shining example
of the makavelian nature of
international religious politics that my
viewers have come to expect the baguer
Moroccan leadership now reached out to
the Spanish who were themselves
currently Under Siege by the Ottomans
and hanging on to the port city of Iran
by the Skin of Their
Teeth the Jihad would be put on
indefinite hold if the Spanish would
send troops to help them in their
resistance to the ottoman Onslaught in
Morocco never was the adage my enemy’s
enemy is my friend more raptly applied
as the Spanish nervously agreed to the
deal but as ottoman pressure mounted the
baguer Moroccan leader was assassinated
by one of his own bodyguards and the
Ottomans went on the offensive pushing
ever deeper into Morocco’s heartlands
and now appointing the dead leaders more
shall we say compliant relative as a
vassel governor bypassing the dead
Sultan’s son and rightful
Heir a flurry of Correspondence was now
sent Across The Straits of Gibralter
with the denied air making overtures to
both the English and French Kings to
support him against both the Ottomans
and his new ally Spain Yes you heard
that right confused sure you are but
wait there’s
more the newly installed puppet Sultan
abdal Malik who had replaced his brother
the rightful Heir and was basically just
an ottoman shill was nervous about
falling out of favor with the big boys
in in Istanbul so he now also instigated
correspondence with Queen Elizabeth over
in Old blighty not forgetting to write
to King Henry III over in France as well
hoping that they might assist him
whether it be against the Ottomans or
the Spanish in any event what the French
and English must have thought about
these two rival factions both lobbying
for support against their own supposed
allies can only make you
wonder the dispossessed claimant soon
also unfortunately died and his son Abu
abdalah Muhammad II who was on the
anti-ottoman side of the family felt so
aggrieved by his uncle’s ongoing
betrayal that he now also secretly
corresponded with Portugal’s King
sebastio because well there was no love
lost between the Portuguese and the
Spanish and all things considered they
seemed like a good horse to bet on at
the time despite having occupied and
crippled all of his country’s seap
ports now young king sebastio had spent
much of his youth under the tutelage of
Jesuits and Remnant Knights Templar who
had found refuge in Portugal after being
exterminated pretty much everywhere else
in Europe and it seems these holy
Warriors Inc ated a deep desire in him
to go on a
crusade but even he was not so naive as
to think he could Liberate the holy land
so taking a crack at Fe seemed as good
an opportunity to prove his Christian
Valor as anywhere
else now with this petition from the
dispossessed wannabe Sultan sebastia
effectively had a pretext as well as
local support to invade Morocco
properly consequently he advertised his
potential campaign as a legitimate
Crusade with fools and adventurers all
across Europe making their way to join
him the Army on its way to link up with
abdalah Muhammad’s own forces eventually
swelled to an impressive 23,000 troops
comprised of the flower of the
Portuguese nobility several thousand
Castilian volunteers 3,000 Flemish and
German mercenaries 600 Italians and a
battalion of over 40 cannons transferred
to North Morocco by 500
ships they had no sooner landed than the
impetuous young king and his desperate
Moroccan Ally headed boldly for the
capital without properly accessing their
existing resources and network and were
soon intercepted by a much larger force
of 60 ,000 troops that had been
substantially reinforced by Elite
ottoman janissaries Cavalry and
artillery the Quasi Crusaders soon found
themselves completely outflanked in the
open by a much larger Army and in the
desperate fighting that followed all
three of the leaders perished hence the
name Battle of the three kings in
1578
by the end of the day’s fighting almost
all of Portugal’s noblemen were dead and
The Ransom of the few that remained
alive almost bankrupted the
treasury it was the single biggest
military disaster in Portugal’s history
while the loss of the childless young
king now led to a succession crisis that
saw Philip II of Spain sebasti Al’s
Habsburg uncle make a direct claim for
the Portuguese Crown which he backed up
with an army of 40,000 troops that
occupied the country in 1580 and crushed
the modest opposition that could be
mastered against
him Portugal was now forced into an
uneasy personal Union with Spain and
though much of their bureaucracy
remained separate the lucanian kingdom
suffered the loss of much of its
Colonial re to Madrid as well as
becoming an unwilling party to all of
Spain’s current Wars particularly
against the English the French and the
Dutch who proceeded to attack Portuguese
Colonial Holdings with unrestrained
gusto you see when Spain took control of
Portugal they immediately shut off
access to the Lisbon Spice Market that
was by now bringing in huge amounts of
spices from Portuguese Holdings in India
and the Asian Pacific Market now if
there’s one thing the Dutch love more
than tulips and windmills it’s cloves so
this trade embargo encouraged Dutch
Merchants to establish Maritime trading
companies of their own such as the Dutch
East India Company which would go on to
challenge Portuguese and Spanish control
the high seas and turn it into the first
Global corporate
superpower one by one Portuguese trade
concessions began to fall to the Dutch
Formosa Salon malaka the Philippines
Japan almost the entirety of their
African outposts and for a short time in
the early 1620s even their Brazilian
Holdings with the newly formed Dutch
West India Company taking possession of
lucrative sugar plantations in the new
world despite the minations of
Portuguese adventurers in the Congo they
just lacked the manpower to fend off
other marauding European
powers and the Dutch especially posed a
threat in Central West Africa such that
by
1637 they had taken the lucrative gold
Hub of elmina as well as the rich sugar
plant ations of saome and Principe in
1642 but we’re getting just a little
ahead of
ourselves despite This Global
catastrophe for the Portuguese the now
wellestablished angolan Fortress at
leanda began sending out raiding parties
northwards into border states that were
nominally vassals of the kingdom of
Congo despite their standing Alliance
the Portuguese Governor never
nevertheless attacked these Estates and
the Dukes that own them on the pretext
of their harboring escaped
slaves this diplomatic insult meant that
the king of Congo Alvaro II and his
eventual successor Pedro II began
seriously considering their political
options they had already granted some
trade concessions to visiting Dutch
Merchants a decade or so before to the
very vocal protest and even violence of
Portuguese locals and now it was King
Pedro II who wrote to the Dutch Estates
General offering not only an alliance
against the Portuguese but also ongoing
trade concessions subsidies and material
support for them in Africa if they would
help them to get rid of the
Portuguese at the time the Dutch
government was in the process of
planning an invasion of Portuguese
Holdings in Brazil notably the lucrative
sugar plantations of Bahia and
pambuko but when they received the
proposal from the congales king the
scheme was rapidly extended to include a
two-pronged attack both in the eastern
and western
Atlantic at the time the majority of
slaves exported to the new world were
coming from Congo and Angola so if they
could [ __ ] this Market it would choke
off a substantial source of revenue for
the
iberians the Dutch agreed to the deal
and dispatched an expeditionary Force
managed by the West India Company
Fleet meanwhile the Portuguese governor
of the angolan colony of lwanda
continued to up the ante by demanding
the king be deposed and replaced by a
candidate of his
choosing a bit Rich considering that
port Portugal was itself the subject of
Spanish King
makers he nevertheless managed to
convince a contingent of imbangala
cannibal Warriors that he first used to
conquer indongo and who had since gone
over to Queen in Jinga to defect back to
the Portuguese side and together they
headed straight for the congales
capital the initial skirmishes were
successful and the cannibals were now
let loose to Loot and publicly Feast on
the bodies of their defeated enemies to
the Great Horror of both the congales
and the local Portuguese
Community who were themselves
unceremoniously stripped of their
belongings and
tortured church leaders all across Congo
were outraged and the pillaging of towns
by the Invaders actually served to
cement the support of both local
Portuguese settlers and congales
citizens behind the king who painted the
angolan Portuguese Marauders not only as
traitors but also unchristian to have
Associated themselves with these
cannibals and facilitated such awful
desecration and
plunder the King Church leaders and
Portuguese settlers all now wrote Fred
letters of protest to the Spanish Royal
Court as well as to the Vatican many of
which are available online denouncing
the governor’s Unholy actions and to
their credit authorities in Europe acted
immediately to remove him from Office
imprisoning him where he soon died while
captured nobles were ordered to be
released and many of those that had
already been shipped off to Brazil were
repatriated by
1625 commoners however were not so lucky
and despite the king’s protest that his
citizens especially women were not to be
sold as slaves few of them made it
back all of this turmoil meant that
Congo had by now had a serious gutful of
Portuguese greed and as his diplomatic
proposals for Alliance and support were
making their way to Amsterdam the King
was simultaneously garnering support and
extracting guarantees from his Regional
barons to launch a campaign to expel the
Portuguese from leanda once and for all
the Dutch were already scouting the
African coast and several engagements in
the vicinity clearly put the angolan
colony on notice and by
1624 26 warships and over 3,000 Soldiers
made their way first to Brazil taking
the city of Salvador in days and then
dispatching five warships and about 500
soldiers to make their way across the
Atlantic and link up with the smaller
Scout Fleet already
there they were to join the secret
congales campaign to capture
leanda but as so often happens in war
the unexpected often spoils even the
best laid
plans King Pedro very inconveniently
expired just as the Dutch ships were
making their way into the harbor and yet
another succession crisis caused
Division and conflict among electing
Clans which only served to distract them
from the important task of War
planning to top it off a neighboring
Kingdom to the north chose this very
opportune moment to flex its own
military muscle and invaded a couple of
Border regions with mercenaries from the
interior all these factors served to
paralyze the congales campaign but the
Dutch plan also rapidly
unraveled as the fleet approached Luanda
they were surprised by a massive
artillery bombardment from The Fortress
that had been significantly upgraded in
anticipation of their arrival frustrated
they headed to the main Congo port in
the county of soyer where they were met
with unexpected hostility by the local
count who refused to recognize the
authenticity of the Dutch government’s
treaty
ratification nor would he allow these
Protestants to March their army through
his Catholic
territory this despite his being one of
the signatories who had petitioned the
Dutch in the first
place the frustrated Dutch now found
themselves in a vulnerable impass it may
be that the outcome of the current
succession crisis had left the Count’s
own Clan high and dry so he was possibly
withdrawing his support for the war
altogether and just playing
stupid nevertheless as the Dutch
withdrew and the entire Alliance
evaporated before it even began the
count of soyo nevertheless continued to
allow Dutch traders to operate there
despite threats by the now emboldened
Portuguese Governor down south
the count was trying to have his cake
and eat
it several congales monarchs now came
and went in quick succession and as the
factions continued their infighting the
Dutch who had by now also lost their
grip on the Catholic Brazilian colonies
decided instead to focus on privateering
plundering Spanish and Portuguese
treasure fleets up and down both sites
of the Atlantic capturing the entire
silver Treasure Fleet in
1628 and generally making a right
nuisance of
themselves nevertheless by 1630 they
took another crack at Brazil and
wrestled Olinda the capital of
pernambuco state and then reife from the
Portuguese and this time with more
generous governorship they would hang on
to them for some time hemorrhaging the
iberians of much needed
cash but the Manpower a burden of owning
and running such a lucrative sugar
region meant that they felt compelled to
now themselves participate in the
traffic of
slaves as they continued their raids up
and down the African Coast in
1635 a Dutch fleet crossed paths with a
large Spanish one sent to intercept them
which forced them to once again seek
Refuge back in the Congo Port of
soil by now the recalcitrant old count
had been replaced by a more amenable one
with several Kings having also come and
gone in the meantime in the usual
merrygoround of congales dynastic
politics but the new king Alvaro v 6 was
still firmly anti-protestant and despite
spending a couple of years under the new
Count’s protection the Dutch were forced
to leave in
1640 but no sooner had they sailed away
then the king’s own brother wrote to the
Dutch government offering both his
support and an alliance against the
Portuguese should his brother the king
Alvaro I 6 mysteriously and
unfortunately fall off the perch such
that he by the grace of God be elected
King in his stead which by some
incredible coincidence is exactly what
happened the very next
year one once again encouraged by the
turn of events the Dutch sent another
massive expeditionary Force this time
even bigger than the one they had sent
to Brazil in
1623 and this time they headed straight
for the angolan colony in leanda taking
it within
days the Portuguese had no choice but to
retreat into the interior as the Dutch
extended their grip on other Portuguese
outposts up and down the coast taking
Salto elmina and indeed the entire
Portuguese gold and Ivory Coast by
1641 one of the reasons they succeeded
so easily this time round was that
Portugal was itself once again in
complete turmoil you see after 60 years
of being in a personal Union with Spain
their treasury was near empty they had
been dragged into extensive Wars on the
European continent Spain had prioritized
the defense of its own Colonial Holdings
over that of its little brother and now
the new king of Spain was actively
seeking to reduce Portugal into merely a
province of
Spain for many in the Portuguese Court
this outrage was the final straw and
Rebellion broke out in 1640 that saw
Portuguese insurgents actively Lobby
other powers such as France and England
for support and alliance against their
Spanish
Masters they had also been at war with
the Dutch Republic for over 40 years
ever since their forced Union with Spain
and even as negotiations began for a
peace treaty they had lost almost their
entire lucrative Central West African
Holdings by
1641 the Dutch now concluded a
comprehensive alliance with the congales
King Garcia II who gave them free reign
to build forts and maneuver across his
territory as they saw fit with the sole
condition that no Protestant
missionaries would ever be allowed to
operate in Congo’s strictly Catholic
domains business was business and the
Dutch more interested in Commerce than
preaching were okay with that
Arrangement they were soon joined in a
Triune Alliance by Queen in Jingo of
indongo who having been exiled from her
lands if you recall by the Portuguese
almost two decades before was hardly the
idol Housewife of her parochial cannibal
husband she was busy raising yet more
troops and overthrowing other small
Kingdoms in the neighborhood such as
matambo and assuming the throne for
herself you go
girl Queen in Jinga was one tough lady
ruthless and Machiavellian adapting her
husband’s highly militarized warrier
culture to her own purposes and she now
raised yet another Army comprised of her
own supporters imbangala battalions
escaped slaves and disenchanted congales
putting them through rigorous training
exercisers and inspiring a fanatical
Devotion to
her having approached both the Dutch and
the congales to do a deal she felt
certain she could regain her Lost
Kingdom from the scattered Portuguese
who had entrenched themselves in the
vicinity of her previous Kingdom
following their own expulsion from
Luanda by
1642 both King Garcia of Congo and Queen
in Jinga of indongo and batamba now set
about attacking Portuguese position at
the periphery of their domains but news
now arrived from Dutch West India
company headquarters that Portugal and
the Netherlands had finally declared a
ceasefire and were in the process of
formalizing a peace treaty such that all
hostilities against one another were to
cease immediately while the final
territorial settlement was being worked
out the Dutch Commander duy notified the
disappointed mongoles King who viewed
the Dutch reversal as a betrayal while
at the same time purging the ranks of
his own Barons over the next three years
and even attacking his own vassel County
of soyo which ended not only in complete
military failure but also distracted him
from focusing on the Portuguese HED up
in the interior on the Fortified island
of
masango we can only guess why but it’s
likely it had something to do with
regaining control of Customs
Revenue poor old Queen in Jinga seeing
both the Dutch and congales bail out of
the action decided that as usual it was
up to a woman to sort out the mess the
boys had gotten themselves into so she
went it alone and attacked the
Portuguese with some Dutch troops in
support but was badly beaten in major
battles during
1644 and
1646 the Dutch despite their ceasefire
saw that in jinger’s defeat would make
them vulnerable and now sent a
considerably larger Detachment to serve
under her command as did King Garcia of
Congo when he finally recovered from his
own humiliating defeats at the hands of
his own
subordinate the fiery African Amazon
once again went onto the offensive her
Army now crushing the Portuguese at the
Battle of kumbi in
1647 and then once again at the Battle
of Ila in
1648 going on to besiege every single
Fort that was
left things were suddenly looking very
Grim indeed for the Portuguese but just
then as though by Miracle a fleet
arrived off fanda and a Portuguese
amphibious assault completely
overwhelmed the depleted Dutch Garrison
and the Fortress was taken almost
without a shot being
fired it seemed the Portuguese were no
suckers after all despite the ceasefire
everyone knew that possession was 9/10
of the law as they say and they weren’t
about to let the prize of Luanda become
a bargaining chip back home in Europe in
very short order they not only expelled
the Dutch entirely out of central Africa
but they also liberated their other
colonies of saome Principe and much of
the Gold Coast particularly the gold
mines of
elmina Queen in Jinga frustrated once
again saw all her hard work evaporate
into thin air without ongoing Dutch
support or that of her perpetually
distracted congales Ally she knew her
options were now limited so she lifted
her sieges and retired with her Army
back into her Matan domains leaving the
idiots to sort out their problems for
themselves the Portuguese now once again
pressed their demands upon the depleted
congales Kingdom taking possession of a
key Island which produced the sea shells
that comprised the internal currency of
the Kingdom you recall that while
International Trade had been long paid
in slaves internally the congales highly
esteemed the local cowry shell as a form
of currency which the Portuguese flooded
into the country first from Southeast
Asia and now by taking control of the
Marine ecosystem of the local source
this action devalued and crippled the
king’s ability to pressure his own
vassals and they now had a strangle hold
on the entire congales economy and began
to squeeze them
hard the next decade or so saw them
exert political pressure on all the
surrounding provinces annexing some and
vassalizing others all at the expense of
a shrinking Congo which remained
paralyzed by internal
conflict in
1663 King aonso v 6 of Portugal now
instructed his governors in Angola to
punch deeper into the
Congo and take possession of a lucrative
copper mine the current congales King
Antonio I finally acted first writing
letters of protest to Europe and then
pursuing an alliance with Spain against
the Portuguese much as his predecessors
had done with the
Dutch the Spanish were in no mood for
making the same mistake as the
netherlanders and politely ignored his
overtures besides they were also out of
cash and out of troops owing to both the
30 years war with the Holy Roman Empire
as well as the ongoing 80 years war with
the Dutch
Republic so King Antonio had no choice
but to go it alone and mobilized an army
to intercept the Portuguese who were now
on their way to pressure one of his
Southern
duchies the two armies met in the Valley
of the ulanga River just south of the
capital of imua in modern Angola which
at the time was a congales vassel state
but upon which the Portuguese had
designs of their own Antonio of Congo
had almost 30,000 troops
including 15,000 archers 5,000 heavy
infantry with shields and swords and
almost 400 Musketeers including 29 local
Portuguese Gunners who were loyal to his
cause the Portuguese Army was only half
as strong comprised largely of Brazilian
conscripts the usual imbangala
mercenaries a regiment of 450 Musketeers
of his own and two artillery
pieces the armies faced off in a narrow
Valley removing any outflank advantage
that Congo’s numerical superiority might
have
afforded the Portuguese Army placed
their Musketeers in the center anchored
by artillery where they bore the brunt
of the hail of arrows that opened
hostilities but the Portuguese Center
held firm and successive waves of
infantry attacks failed to break them
with King Antonio his two sons and many
congales Nobles being killed in
Relentless futile
attacks when the king fell congales
morale collapsed and the Army was
quickly routed from the field dozens of
nobles were captured including one
princess aqualuna about whom we know
very
little except that she commanded an
entire wing of the congales Army in the
aftermath most of them including the
princess swiftly found themselves
transported to the slave markets of
Brazil with many thousands ending up on
local
plantations Congo now without HS and
legitimate claimants typically descended
into Civil War once again this time
lasting half a century while Portugal
went off to pick off one Province after
another
but when they attacked the count of soyo
they found him as ferocious as the king
of Congo had and this Noble House on its
own now faced off against the entire
Portuguese Army of Angola but which
nevertheless thrashed them where
everyone else had failed in the Battle
of kitmo in
1670 such that scarcely a Portuguese
attacker was Left Alive to tell the tale
though it should be said that Dutch
Traders had pitched in with muskets and
artillery to help the locals
out the Portuguese Army now having been
completely destroyed were no longer in a
position to molest either the remnant
Congo State or the increasingly
independent counts of soyo who
maintained their independence till the
19th century though they failed to
capitalize on their game
by advancing on the dwindling Portuguese
Garrison at
lwanda Queen in jinger’s campaigning
days were also more or less over and in
the decades that followed she encouraged
missionaries to visit her kingdom even
having a lively correspondence with the
Vatican and earning the praise of Pope
Alexander iith in
1661 for her efforts in spreading the
faith she eventually made peace with the
Portuguese in
1656 who made some territorial
concessions to her and she in return
opened a slave market in her own Capital
which now made her extremely
wealthy she maintained a foreign
secretary from whom we get a rich
history of her rule there one notable
example was the mention of her
participation in combat display during
local festivals even when she was well
into her
80s she boasted even at this Advan age
that she could still take on five
Warriors at once unless they had muskets
she hated
muskets Legend has it that she
maintained her Incredible strength by
maintaining a Haram of male lovers who
wore women’s clothing while in her
presence but who would then have to
fight occasionally to the death for the
privilege of spending the night with
her if their conjugal performance was
shall we say disappointing they would
lose their heads the very next morning
talk about
pressure the other local Amazon we know
about congales Princess aqual tune if
you recall was sold into slavery along
with hundreds of other prisoners of war
and ended up in Brazil following the
disastrous battle of IMA in
1665 and this is where our story takes
on another interesting
turn at the time the kingdom of Congo
and now increasingly the Portuguese
Colony at lwanda were the major slave
trading hubs of West Africa with a
majority of captives being taken to
Brazilian sugar plantations some of
which had been for some time in Dutch
hands but which had after the the 1650s
mostly reverted back to Portuguese
control partly through Insurrection and
partly through formal treaty
negotiation given both the turbulent
political situation as well as the
mountainous forested interior a large
number of slaves frequently absconded
into the Uncharted
Bush sometimes they escaped individually
and at other times in Mass
breakouts these fugitives were known as
Maroons from the Spanish word Saron
meaning feral or
fugitive manpower to police and control
the slave population was generally
insufficient with many thousands of
fugitives right from the late 16th
century clustering in spontaneous
isolated communities known as mambos
throughout the Brazilian
Hinterland some joined up with displaced
indigenous groups While others found
them to be hostile and went it
alone it should be said though that in
1570 almost a century prior the
unfortunately F King sebastia I of
Portugal had actually issued a Royal
Decree that all indigenous people in the
Brazilian colonies were free subjects of
the crown and were not to be either
molested or enslaved much as Queen
Isabella of Spain had proclaimed when
Columbus returned from his trip to
Hispanola in
1492 however in both these cases despite
the magnanimous position of the crown
the loophole was that if indigenous
people attacked a settlement or failed
to pay their dues to the governor all
bets were off much as was the case in
Spanish America plantation owners
Governors Soldiers of Fortune and
businessmen
regularly fabricated claims of
indigenous violence or actively incited
it through displacing them by
encroaching onto their lands so it was
easy enough to justify approval for
their seizure and penal enslavement such
that indigenous slavery actually
increased after
1570 despite these generous citizenship
laws with only the occasional
intervention from Europe to investigate
abuses and pun corrupt local
officials given their own subequatorial
homelands the heat humidity and Monsoon
tropical diseases such as malaria and
yellow fever were far better tolerated
by Africans than their European
overlords so pursuing Maroons into the
interior was generally considered Risky
Business though punitive Expeditions
were nevertheless regularly conducted
male fugitives who were caught were
typically executed while women and
children were simply
re-enslaved as time went on maroon
communities began to Cluster and grow
into sprawling townships called kilos
derived from the congales word for a
military
encampment the inhabitants of kilos
developed their own interior networks
defensive fortifications agricultural
lands infrastructure and even government
typically comprised of a king attended
by a council that included both men and
women whose position was elected not
hereditary much as was the case in
Central West Africa from whence they
came kbos would at times form war
parties raiding plantations for supplies
and freeing other slaves such that
Governors felt increasingly compelled to
employ independent Fortune Hunters
called bantes to operate on their behalf
and take on the more militant
kbos but over time the Renegade
communities also conducted a substantial
trade Enterprise with Coastal
settlements whose inhabitants regularly
lobbied Governors to stop interfering
with them because columbos were
generally good for
business we know that princess aqua tuna
ended up at the Port of reife the main
commercial hub in Brazil at the time and
we know she was sold to a sugar
Plantation
nearby she was reported as pregnant
though we have no details as to the
father it’s probable that she already
had children because one of her sons
later to become known as ganga Zumba was
said to have been born before the Battle
of IMA that saw her transported to the
new world anyway princess aqual Turner
and what children she already had
managed to escape and made their way to
a kilombo some 90 kilm Inland called
palmares accounts by members of a number
of Portuguese punitive Expeditions have
given us rich details of the structure
and organization of Kos which besides
dwellings also contained workshops
forges schools Community halls and E
Christian chapels ministered by
preachers who tended to their flock with
a syncretized form of Catholic African
Christianity which banned Witchcraft and
any form of traditional
sorcery marriages and baptisms were
performed though reports tell us that
they were only Loosely modeled along
proper Catholic
lines evidence suggests that the kilombo
of palmares was populated substantially
by angolan and congales diaspora and
increasingly their locally born children
so it’s not surprising that aqualuna
ended up here too though we also have
evidence of a vibrant multiethnic
non-african proportion of inhabitants
including indigenous Amar Indians and
even white settlers who had ended up on
the wrong side of the
law aqualon was very likely recognized
by the community for both her Noble
bloodline and Leadership qualities
Because by the early
1670s her eldest son was already
considered the King of palmares though
little more is later recorded about his
mother ganga Zumba was probably his
title rather than his actual name
because in the congales language ganga
in Zumi was a title carried by all Kings
as a suffix referring to their role as a
protector against evil
spirits since there are no records that
indicate what his real name was most
contemporary writers use some variation
of this title to refer to
him now ganga Zumba had a palace
personal bodyguard ministers numerous
wives and he presided over a cluster of
villages as eventually did his brother
brother nephew and Sons in the now
sprawling and self-sufficient network of
kbos that had a population at their
height possibly of 30,000
people the palmares community growing in
strength and seen as a continuous Threat
by both Governors and plantation owners
found itself the subject of intensifying
numbers of military Expeditions against
them numbering at least once per year
almost all of them ending in complete
failure as the maroon spy Network
ensured they were usually ready for
bantes incursions either evacuating
entire settlements before they got there
or otherwise picking off soldiers one by
one as they trudged through the muddy
mountainous forested terrain where
artillery and muskets afforded few
advantages to the
attackers some have estimated that the
network of kilos centered around
palmares covered an area almost as large
as Portugal which would have made
patrolling it very difficult
indeed nevertheless as the years went by
the authorities managed a few successful
forays with ganga Zumba being wounded
and a number of his kin being
captured in one such raid his young
nephew was apprehended and end ended up
in the service of a Franciscan monk who
taught him to read and write and treated
him
kindly but the teenager nevertheless
absconded back to palmares where his
sudden appearance as if back from the
dead has led some Scholars to believe he
earned himself the nickname zomie which
has relation to the voodoo term
zombie now zumie became a powerful
leader in his own right acting as war
minister to his uncle but as conflict
with the authorities intensified King
ganga Zumba sent a delegation to the
governor in
1678 to negotiate a ceasefire and try to
secure some kind of diplomatic
solution after tense negotiations the
governor of pambuko agreed to recognize
ganga Zumba as a sovereign ruler and to
recognize his people as free citizens
granting them formal trading rights so
long as they migrated their Capital City
from its current location to a valley
further to the North in addition they
were to cease raiding established
plantations and agree to return any
slaves that had escaped from that time
on the king agreed and began the Exodus
of his subject Community to the
designated location but not everyone was
happy with the
agreement his nephew zumie was
particularly opposed to it especially
the agreement to return escaped slaves
which to his mind made them complicit in
the ongoing misery of their
people though records are murky it
appears that Zumi and his fiercely
independent wife dandara had his uncle
poisoned and now assumed resumed not
only the leadership of palmares but they
also resumed the resistance against the
Portuguese earning legendary status
among both their supporters and enemies
for their Valor and cunning in
battle dandara was just another in a
long line of tough African women who
stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their
men on the
battlefield their resistance continued
for another 16 years as ferocious
battles with increasing numbers of
bantes saw them repel one campaign after
another but in
1694 A Renewed assault on the palmares
capital of makako Saw The Defenders
trapped behind their Palisades while the
governor’s Army began erecting a
palisade of their own around that one
besieging them in Echoes of Julius
Caesar’s attack on Alisia in 52
BC low on ammunition and seeing No Way
Out The Defenders stormed the Portuguese
line but were cut down by Superior
Firepower such that 500 Defenders lost
their lives and that many more again
were captured including women and
children King zumie though wounded
managed to escape but his wife dandara
threw herself over a ravine rather than
surrender to a life of indignity as did
a number of other
women palmares referred to by some
historians as the black Troy of Brazil
finally fell and though King zumbi
continued his Insurgent activities for
the next two years records suggest he
was eventually betrayed by one of his
supporters and he was ambushed and shot
his head paraded as a trophy back at the
governor’s
mansion both King Zumi and his uncle
King ganga Zumba have been mythologized
and their identities have somewhat
merged over the following centuries they
are now celebrated as national heroes
among black Brazilians while historians
often refer to Zumi especially as the
Brazilian Spartacus
back over in the Kingdom of Congo the
usual challenges of elective kingship
continued to fracture the country and
despite its ongoing survival it never
regained the luster of its previous
Glory while transportation to North
America continued from African States
further north by
1839 under pressure by the British the
Portuguese government finally abolished
their own participation in the slave
trade and commerce in the Congo Basin
began to shift to the manufacture of
rubber peanuts wax and
ivory but Portugal continued to play a
prominent role in the country’s politics
supporting some candidates and
undermining others such that by
1859 King Pedro V swore vassalage to
Portugal bringing the nation for the
first time in 400 years under the
complete jurisdiction of a foreign
power by the
1870s the transatlantic slave trade had
been all but eliminated by British Naval
patrols who had at one time been its
second biggest participant by volume
after Portugal and arguably some of its
most cruel proponents but who now after
40 Years of Shame had committed a
significant portion of state revenue and
Naval resources in its
elimination other European powers and
the United States as we well know
followed soon after while the French
Revolution inspired a number of colonial
territories such as Haiti to rise up and
fight for
liberty but the east coast of Africa
continued the practice of slavery under
the Arabs much as it had done for over a
thousand years before until here too the
British Navy eventually put a stop to it
by force in an 1897 ultimatum to the
Sultan of
Zanzibar however there was
simultaneously an arms race going on
that saw a renewed Scramble for African
Resources by the major European powers
concluded at the conference of Berlin in
18 84 to their shame carving up the
continent between them and the Central
West African sphere of influence of the
once Mighty Kingdom of Congo was now
divided up between Belgian French
Portuguese British and Spanish
imperialist conglomerates with Portugal
still hanging on to the rump vassel
state of the original
Kingdom Nationalist uprisings and social
unrest eventually saw Portugal formally
dissolve the kingdom of Congo in
1914 The Wider territory remained
subject to Colonial governorship with
the whole new chapter of exploitation
and tragedy particularly in the region
ruled by Belgium which saw the deaths of
millions of people under indescribably
brutal conditions of servitude under
Belgium’s King Leopold II a complete
monster who made it his own private
rubber Empire unaccountable even to his
own
Parliament today the Congo Basin is home
to a number of independent republics the
Democratic Republic of Congo largely
comprised of post Belgian Colonial
territory achieving independence in
1960 the Republic of Congo just to its
North which was for Ally administered as
a French Colony also achieving
independence in 1960 and Angola which
largely retained a Portuguese political
influence and achieved its full
Independence in
1975 all of these countries continue to
Grapple with the legacy of tribalism
slavery and European exploitation plus
the tragic blowback of 20th century
revolutionary communism vigorously
sponsored by the Soviet
Union today the people of Central West
Africa are emerging from this long and
turbulent history with a renewed sense
of Pride and are taking their place in
the family of Nations despite
intermittent political instability and
ongoing economic challenges and it
should be said fresh International
meddling by countries such as Russia and
China so what can we say about the
congales people and their interaction
with Europe over the course of the last
500
years it’s clear that when Europeans
first ventured south of the Sahara they
found well-established sophisticated
cultures long used to International
Trade diplomacy and politics they like
the Europeans had practiced much the
same systems of class distinction
military expansion and centralization of
authority it that characterized many
other civilizations around the
world the kingdom of Congo in particular
quickly grasped the potential of
advancing their political interests by
adopting the Customs fashion technology
and even religion brought by the
Portuguese and successive monarchs
showed incredibly Progressive attitudes
toward modernizing their state
establishing embassies corresponding
widely and as equals with their European
counterparts few westerners today are
aware of the numerous congales diplomats
that resided in Lisbon Madrid the
Vatican and elsewhere not in the least
bit intimidated by either popes or Kings
where they now took an active role in
pursuing alliances that suited their
purpose becoming perhaps the most
well-known of the subsaharan kingdoms to
17th century Europe
Europeans they like many others in
Africa were a culture in which women not
only played a key political but also
military role and their electoral system
of kingship though in some ways flawed
had the seeds of Republican government
at a time when much of Europe was ruled
by absolute monarchies of extreme
inequality and poverty for
most something that’s not widely known
is that the king of Congo in their
attempt to modernize sponsored public
literacy at a time when most ordinary
Europeans could not themselves read or
write the depiction of subsaharan
Africans as
unsophisticated is a view that emerged
in the 19th century rather than before
this time and is largely the consequence
of the propaganda of unrestrained
capitalism and Victorian era Protestant
missionaries who viewed even Catholic
Europeans as
primitive the history of slavery is
Laden with among other things
significant irony European Enlightenment
era human exploitation was in some ways
more barbaric than that of the
Renaissance preceding it yet it gave
rise to the very movement that for the
first and only time in human history
ended the entire practice
slavery was also greatly facilitated by
African monarchs who benefited from
conquering their neighbors yet
eventually themselves became its victims
as their societies fragmented and were
eventually annexed by
Europeans for all our cultural
differences the people of the kingdom of
Congo like indigenous groups everywhere
were in most respects pretty much the
same as everyone else looking out for
their own interests leveraging new
technology and scheming against their
own neighbors participating in and
eventually coming to suffer the
consequences of globalized trade and
conflict like so many other nations they
passed down the stories of their Heroes
both men and women who fought and died
for Freedom often A Long Way from Home
organizing new Society in foreign lands
and leaving us a rich account of the
Triumph of the human spirit and our
common Humanity that can perhaps serve
to bring us all just that little bit
closer
together
50 Comments
All history can be viewed from secular and spiritual lenses. Both are required for full understanding.
That was awesome!
This is sick. Another great doc!
Well done. Very balanced and very watchable. Thank You.
More African content please
Superb work! I hope your channel takes off!
No wander you see many close to wooly haired peoples . In Portugal.
What do you think would happen if Viking had guns?
Europeans introduced firearms to the African constant, and that's🐂💩
Thank you for this very interesting documentary! I have very little knowledge of the premodern history of sub-Saharan Africa, so I appreciate this type of content. Can you recommend any other good documentaries on other African kingdoms?
God be with you out there everybody. ✝️ 🙂
Now do a video on who owned all the slave ships.
Social media is becoming the global University of humanity
How come you're not talking about the Muslim slave trade that went on well into the 1960s
The image you have as the cover of your video is very misleading, why did you is he dressed as an European, couldn't you find an image of someone with traditional attire?
Now you know how Mansa Musa got rich
3:14 that's not the portrait of Henry the Navigator
The amount of research you did is phenomenal. Very well put together. Nobody talks about Africans having slaves nor about their involvement in the slave trade. And yes, I live in Africa.
Thumbnail looks like the late Gary Coleman.
There was a part in the book THE RIVER KONGO written by Peter Forbath, there was a part that described the king of the Kongo. The king was wearing a white cloth around his head with a serpent attached to his forhead, gold bangles on his wrist and arms and he was also wearing a short white kilt. Does this description remind you of anybody?
Very grateful for your work!
As always the best youre calm voice the way you whrite soooo nice keep up the good job! Thx for making this awesome videos❤❤❤
The thumbnail looks like the Different Strokes actor😊
QUANDO SE FALA DO REINO DO KONGO, NÃO SE DEVE CONFUNDIR COM A ACTUAL REPÚBLICA DEMOCRATICA DO CONGO E O CONGO BRAZZAVILLE. TUDO O QUE FOI NARRADO NESTE DOCUMENTÁRIO, TUDO QUE FOI ESCRITO SOBRE O REINO DO KONGO ACONTECEU EM ANGOLA E TODOS OS REIS E PESSOAS IMPORTANTE DO REINO ERAM ANGOLANAS. OS PORTUGUESES CHEGARAM AO REINO DO KONGO EM 1482 E SAIRAM DO REINO EM 1975 COM A INDEPENDENCIA DE ANGOLA, DEIXANDO A SUA LÍNGUA E CULTURA.
Very unique piece of work.
Thanks.
Look at y'all trying to justify what you've done. Smh.
Fantastic work!
Love these vids
Kongolisolo was inhabited by Malaysians and later became a Portuguese Koloni.
Meaning it was a place Portugal-Spain shipped their undesirables into labour camps.
One of those undesirables was a Spainish Negro named Don Juan de Valladolid of Valladolid Spain.
You should learn this name because he became in control of the Slave Trade.
Also keep in mind Spain, Iberia, Hispanic, and Hebrew are all the same words in different languages.👍
The guy on thumbnail kinda looks like Gary Coleman
Egyptians or leprechauns?
good! with lots of information that as a specialist in african-latinamerican history I can only back, with some very minor observations, thanks, very informative!
Love your videos! Keep doing it, yours is the best history channel on Youtube! 🙂
We wuz kings!
Thank you fir this very good
The imbangala warriors were hardcore
Aah, so blame the Vatican for the start of the African Slave trade. Fine with me.
Excellent docu, going deep in the details of Kongo's history and its relation with the wider world.
Being a 🇨🇩 native, I'd like to thank you for the extensive data you accumulated to explain the history of the Bantu people I originate from. I am well aware of the majority of this timeline. I can say some things in the timeline were added to me as I grew my understanding of my history. Although certain specifics you brought up, I was not as aware the course of action and implementation, etc
I'll be sharing your work with family and get some input on your evidence. Much appreciated.
Also, one question: Who from your knowledge settled first in the specific region of Katakokombe, DRC in Kasai-Oriental/Kasai-Occidental? Which direction were they coming from prior to setting in the modern-day area with the same name?
Thanks again mate!(got a good buddy of mine who is from Australia)
Promo-SM 😢
Hi there!
The video mentions its complex history of slavery, Amazon Queens, and a Brazilian Spartacus. It's amazing how the Kongo Kingdom has shaped the African continent and beyond. I think it's important to share these stories so that we can learn from the past and build a better future for all.
I'm also a YouTuber, and I'm always looking for new and interesting content to share with my viewers. I would be honored if you would check out my channel, Father of History . I make videos on a variety of historical topics, including ancient civilizations, wars, and inventions.
Thanks for the great video!
Nice to have a quality no-frills source of history content in today's MCN world
You mention URSR and China interfering in Africa, but no mention of the main culprits which are the UK, France, and the US, and their unscrupulous oil, mining, cocoa, etc multinationals.
My question is what made them want to be like the Portuguese so bad?
Very informative European history video, but you clearly don’t know any Kongolese people.
Duarte Pacheco Pereira had already sailed, with an expertise of maritime science, to Brazil in 1498 and he was also the cartographer and ambassador that signed the Treaty of Tordesilhas in that town in person.
Even though, in 1503, he wrote a book on this travel "Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis", the manuscript only became of official knowledge 400 years after.
Interesting… great video
I will never respect what you Haved Done to Hebrew Ortegese Sanish Romans
Mansa Mussa Fought Portegese
What is the 24th Meridian doing in Brazil?
Great work my scholars 😂 thanks you