The Kingdom of Loango was a state created by Kongo people during approximately the 16th to 19th centuries in what is now the western part of the Republic of the Congo, Southern Gabon and Cabinda. Situated to the north of the more powerful Kingdom of Kongo, at its height in the 17th century Loango influence extended from Cape St Catherine in the north to almost the mouth of the Congo River. Loango ceased to exist during the 1800s African colonization by European forces.
Loango exported copper to the European market, and was a major producer and exporter of cloth.
The English traveller Andrew Battel, when he was there in about 1610, recorded that the predecessor of the unnamed king ruling at that time was "Gembe" or Gymbe (modernized as Njimbe), possibly the founder of the kingdom. With the death of King Buatu in 1787, the succession of leadership is uncertain.
Name The inhabitants, who are a branch of the Bakongo, spoke a northern dialect of the Kikongo language also spoken in the Kingdom of Kongo. Although the Vili eventually became the dominant political group, the Kingdom of Loango also included the Yombe, Kunyi, Lumbu, and Babongo Pygmies. Missionaries who visited the Loango coast at the end of the nineteenth century often called the people of Loango Bafiote, and their language Fiote. Their ethnic name today is usually given as Vili or Bavili.Note: The Kingdom of Loango was composed of the Yombe, Vili, Kunyi, Lumbu, and Babongo pygmies . This term is attested as early as the seventeenth century, where it was usually spelled "Mobili" (plural Mobilis). This term is from the singular form (Muvili today) pluralized according to the rules of Portuguese.Phyllis Martin, The External Trade of the Loango Coast, pp. 3 (Fiote) and 8 (Vili).Olfert Dapper, Naukeurige Beschrijvinge der Africa Gewesten (Amsterdam, 1668) p. 518. An older English translation is John Ogilby, Africa (London, 1670), p. 491.
The etymology of Loango remains uncertain. Frank Hagenbucher-Sacripanti states that “a state was established, which received the name Loango, a term denoting authority (Lwaangu: political command); the word ngo, meaning ‘panther’ in Kikongo and symbolizing strength and power, is said by some authors to be the origin of the term Kongo and of the many provincial and place names containing this syllable. It should be noted, however, that while this animal is called ngo in Kugni, it is called tchikummbu in Vili.”. The term ngo is also attested in Kiyombe. Oral traditions collected during the twentieth century likewise refer to a common ancestress, Ngu Na, sometimes interpreted as a reference to the primordial forest.
History
The origins of the kingdom are obscure. The most ancient complex society in the region was at Madingo Kayes, which was already a multi-site settlement in the first century CE.James Denbow, "Congo to Kalahari: Data and Hypotheses about the Political Economy of the Early Western Stream of the Bantu Expansion" African Archaeology Review 8 (1990): 139-75. At present archaeological evidence is too scarce to say much more about developments until the late fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries.For a survey of modern traditions and limited archaeology known in 1972, see Phyllis Martin, The External Trade of the Loango Coast (Oxford, 1972), pp. 3-8.
Loango is not mentioned in early travelers' accounts of the region, nor is it mentioned in the titles of King Afonso I of Kongo in 1535, though Kakongo, Vungu, and Ngoyo are.Afonso I to Pope Paulo III, 21 February 1535 in António Brásio, ed. Monumenta Missionaria Africana (15 vols, Lisbon 1952-88) 2: 38.
The earliest reference to Loango in a documentary source is a mention around 1561 by Sebastião de Souto, a priest in Kongo, that King Diogo I (1545–61) sent missionaries to convert Loango to Christianity.Apuntamentos de Sebastião de Souto (1561) in Brásio, Monumenta 3: 478. Duarte Lopes, ambassador from Kongo to the Holy See in Rome in 1585, related that "Loango is a friend of the King of Congo and it is said that he was a vassal in past times" which is consistent with Loango's origins from Kakongo, a vassal of Kongo.Filipo Pigafetta, Relatione del Reame de Congo et della contrade circonvincini (Rome: Grassi, 1591), p. 14. A different English translation, Margarite Hutchinson, A Report on the Kingdom of Congo and surrounding countries (London, 1881), p. 24
Dutch visitors recorded the first traditional account of the kingdom's origin in the 1630s or '40s. In their account as reported by the geographer Olfert Dapper, the region where Loango would be constructed was populated by a number of small polities including Mayumba, Kilongo, Piri and Wansi, "each with their own leader" who "made war on each other." He recorded that the founder of Loango, who said he hailed from the district in Nzari in the small coastal kingdom of Kakongo, itself a vassal of Kongo, triumphed over his rivals through the skillful use of alliances to defeat those who opposed him, particularly Wansa, Kilongo and Piri, the latter two of which required two wars to subdue. Once this had been effected, however, a range of more northern regions, including Docke and Sette submitted voluntarily. Having succeeded in the conquest, the new king moved northward, founded settlements in a variety of places and eventually built his capital in Buali in the province of Piri (from which the ethnic name "Muvili" eventually derived).Dapper, Naukeurige Beschrijvinge p. 518. Ogilby, Africa, p. 490-91, but misprints "Lerri" for "Zerri" in the original Dutch.Summary in Martin, External Trade, p. 8.
The English traveller Andrew Battel wrote when he was there in about 1610, that the predecessor of the king ruling at that time was "Gembe" or "Gymbe" (modernized as "Njimbe"). pp. 44 (Gembe) and 45 (Gymbe). The modernization was proposed by Ravenstein, following the advice of R. E. Dennett, a resident trader on the coast. A Dutch description published in 1625 said that a ruler who had died sometime before that date had ruled for 60 years and taken the throne around 1565.Nicholas van Wassenaer, Historisch verhael aller gedenckwaerdiger geschiedenissen die en Europe . . . , eighth part, (Amsterdam:: Ian Lanß Boeckwerkoper, 20 May 1625) article of October 1624 to April 1625, fols. 27 (length of reign) and 28 (death). The documentary chronology thus makes it very likely that Njimbe was the founder and first ruler mentioned in the traditions, and this supposition is supported by traditions recorded around 1890 by R. E. Dennett which also named Njimbe as the first ruler.R. E. Dennett, At the Back of the Black Man's Mind (London: Macmillan, 1906), pp. 5-6.
On the basis of later traditions from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries linking the founding of Loango to that of Kongo, Phyllis Martin posited a much earlier foundation, the late fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries. She argues that the absence of Loango from early titles of the king of Kongo is evidence that Loango was already independent at that time.Martin, External Trade, p. 9.
Royal succession
Njimbe had created a rule of succession which was in place around 1600, in which the king gave command over four provinces to members of his family, called the provinces of Kaye, Boke, Selage, and Kabango, and the king was to be chosen from a rotation between them. When the king died the ruler of Kaye took over, as he did indeed in the pre-1624 succession, and if the rule was followed then the ruler of Boke took his place; the other two provincial rulers advanced as well, and the king appointed a new ruler for Kabango.Battel, The Strange Adventures (ed. E.G. Ravenstein), p.50.van Wassenaer, Historisch verhael, fol 28.
In 1663, the king was baptized as Afonso by the Italian Capuchin priest Bernardo Ungaro, but there was considerable opposition to this from within the country, and indeed when he died, a non-Christian took over, but this one was himself overthrown by one of the Christian party in 1665.Giovanni Cavazzi da Montecuccolo, Istorica Descrizeione de tre regni Congo, Matamba ed Angola (Bologna, 1687) Book 5, nos. 53-57. This civil war was still ongoing in the 1670s.Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi da Montecuccolo, "Vite de Frate Minori Capuccini del Ordine del Serafico Pre San Francesco, morti nelle Missini d'Etiopia dall'anno 1645 sino all'anno 1677," pub in Carlo Toso (ed.) Il Congo, Cimitero dei Cappuccini nell'inedito di P. Cavazzi (sec. XVII) (Rome: L'Italia Francescana, 1992) p. 119. In the aftermath of this civil war, a number of the Christian party fled to neighboring territories, one of whom, known to history as Miguel da Silva, was elected ruler of Ngoyo and was ruling there in 1682."Cronica Q" fol. 123v, published by Romain Rainero, Il Congo Luca da Caltanisetta as Appendix IV, pp. 458-78
When Nathaniel Uring, an English merchant came to Loango to trade in 1701, he reported that the king had died and the power of the administration was in the hands of the "Queen or Chief Governess of that Country," named "Mucundy" and with whom he had to deal as if with the ruler.Nathaniel Uring, ed. Alfred Dewar, The Voyages and Travels of Captain Nathaniel Uring (London: Cassell and Co., 1930), pp. 27 and 29 This title referred to a woman with a regular role in the administration as overseer of women's affairs.On this woman's role, see Dapper, Beschrivinge, p.
Many years elapsed before Loango is mentioned again. During this time the rules of succession, whether formal or informal seem to have changed. When the French missionaries directed by Abbé Liévin-Bonaventure Proyart came to Loango in 1766, they noted that there was no clear succession to the throne, that anyone born of a person regarded as a princess (only female succession mattered) could aspire to the throne. Moreover, the death of a king was cause for a frequently long interregnum; the king ruling in 1766 had come to power only after an interregnum of seven years, during which time the affairs of the country were managed by a regent called Mani Boman. The Mani Boman was appointed by the king during his lifetime. Usually two were appointed to cover the eventuality of the death of one of the two. They, in turn received the petitions of a number of eligible candidates for the throne.
Eventually, the electors of the kingdom, who were those who held offices appointed by the late king, met to decide on the next king. In theory, as the old constitution maintained, the king named his successor as well and placed him as ruler of Kaye, to succeed him at his death, but as there was so much contention as to who should hold the position, the late king died without naming a Ma-Kaye.Abbé Liévin-Bonaventure Proyart, Histoire de Loango, Kakongo et de autres royaumes d'Afrique (Paris and Lyon, 1776), pp. 127-32.
Historian Phyllis Martin contends that the external trade of the country had enriched some members of the nobility ahead of others and had thus put pressure on the older constitution as wealthier upstart princes pressed their case forward.Phyllis Martin, External Trade, pp. 158-161. She argues that important members of the council were people who had obtained their positions through contact with external trade, particularly the slave trade, and they had come to share power with the king. She posits that this alteration in relative power allowed the council to dominate the king by forcing longer and longer interregna. In fact, after the death of King Buatu in 1787, no king was elected for over 100 years.Eduard Pechuël-Loesche, Volkskunde von Loango (Stuttgart: Streckel and Schoder, 1907) p. 155. However, to some extent royal authority remained in the hands of a person entitled the Nganga Mvumbi (priest of the corpse) who oversaw the body of the dead king awaiting burial. Several of these Nganga Mvumbi succeeded each other in the late eighteenth and through the nineteenth centuries.Martin, External Trade, p. 169.
Administration and government