Afonso I of Kongo

Mvemba a Nzinga, baptised Afonso, ruled the Kingdom of Kongo in west-central Africa for more than thirty years in the early sixteenth century. A committed Catholic, he made Christianity the religion of his court and worked closely with Portugal, while his kingdom's growing trade with the Portuguese came to rest more and more on the sale of enslaved people. His long series of letters to the Portuguese kings is the main written source for Kongo in his time.

He was born around 1456, a son of Nzinga a Nkuwu, the king of Kongo, and by 1491 he was in his thirties and governing the north-eastern province of Nsundi. That year the first Portuguese reached the capital, Mbanza Kongo. The king accepted baptism, taking the name João, and his son was baptised as Afonso. He spent years studying with Portuguese priests, who described him to their king as an eager and learned convert. When his father turned away from the new faith around 1495 and expelled the priests, Afonso gave them shelter in his own province.

Kongo's kings were chosen from among eligible royal men rather than by strict inheritance. When João died in 1506, Afonso's mother kept the death secret long enough for him to reach the capital and gather his supporters. His half-brother Mpanzu a Kitima raised an army against him and was defeated and killed outside Mbanza Kongo. Afonso's followers credited the victory to a vision of Saint James and armoured horsemen in the sky, a story some historians read as a symbol of his defeat of the anti-Christian faction at court. The scene was placed on the kingdom's coat of arms. His reign is usually dated from 1509.

Afonso set out to make Kongo a Catholic country. He paid for the church out of royal taxes and founded schools; by 1516 the royal school had more than 1,000 pupils, and over time the nobility became literate, though schools were not open to commoners. He sent young nobles and his own children to study in Europe. His son Henrique was made a bishop in 1518 and served in Kongo until his death in 1531. Kongolese nobles took Portuguese names, titles and dress, and Afonso exchanged embassies with Lisbon and sent envoys to Rome.

Afonso strengthened royal power in the capital and fought wars of expansion to the south and east. Captives from these wars were enslaved, and some were sold to the Portuguese, whose colony on São Tomé created a growing demand for slaves; in 1512, writing to King Manuel I, he mentioned sending 410 slaves taken in a campaign against Ndongo. Slaves became a currency for paying for goods and for the education of Kongolese abroad. By the mid-1520s some nobles were trading directly with Portuguese merchants and even kidnapping free Kongolese for sale. In 1526 Afonso protested to Portugal, threatened to stop the trade, and set up a board to check that those being sold had been lawfully enslaved. He did not end the Atlantic slave trade itself, and in later years he worked to keep control of it and to tax it as a Portuguese post at Luanda began to compete.

In 1540 a group of plotters, including Portuguese residents, tried and failed to kill him. He died at the end of 1542 or early in 1543 and was succeeded by his son Pedro, who was overthrown by Afonso's grandson Diogo in 1545. Historians still debate how far his faith was personal conviction and how far political strategy, and how far his reign was shaped by Portuguese interests, but Kongo remained a Christian kingdom for the rest of its history.

Our 1530 map shows Kongo during his reign, near the coast of present-day Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.