The Kongo Kingdom
The Origins, Dynamics and Cosmopolitan Culture of an African Polity

A unique and forward-thinking book that sheds new light on the origins, dynamics, and cosmopolitan culture of the Kongo Kingdom from a cross-disciplinary perspective.

Koen Bostoen (Edited by), Inge Brinkman (Edited by)

9781108463928, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 March 2020

334 pages, 29 b/w illus. 9 maps
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.75 kg

'An interdisciplinary look at the history and culture of the Kingdom of Kongo, which flourished around the lower reaches of the Congo River, from c. 1250 through c. 1600, for a time having ties to the Vatican as well other western powers. … A very good work, this is primarily for the specialist in African history.' The NYMAS Review

The Kongo kingdom, which arose in the Atlantic Coast region of West-Central Africa, is a famous emblem of Africa's past yet little is still known of its origins and early history. This book sheds new light on that all important period and goes on to explain the significance of its cosmopolitan culture in the wider world. Bringing together different new strands of historical evidence as well as scholars from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, archaeology, art history, history and linguistics, it is the first book to approach the history of this famous Central African kingdom from a cross-disciplinary perspective. All chapters are written by distinguished and/or upcoming experts of Kongo history with a focus on political space, taking us through processes of centralisation and decentralisation, the historical politics of extraversion and internal dynamics, and the geographical distribution of aspects of material and immaterial Kongo culture.

Introduction: cross-disciplinary approaches to Kongo history Koen Bostoen and Inge Brinkman
Part I. The Origins and Dynamics of the Kongo Kingdom: 1. The origins of Kongo: a revised vision John K. Thornton
2. A central African kingdom: Kongo in 1480 Wyatt MacGaffey
3. Seventeenth-century Kikongo is not the ancestor of present-day Kikongo Koen Bostoen and Gilles-Maurice de Schryver
4. Soyo and Kongo: the undoing of the Kingdom's centralisation John K. Thornton
5. The Eastern Border of the Kongo kingdom: on relocating the Hydronym Barbela Igor Matonda
Part II. Kongo's Cosmopolitan Culture and the Wider World: 6. From image to grave and back: multidisciplinary inquiries into Kongo Christian visual culture Cécile Fromont
7. Ceramics decorated with woven motifs: an archaeological Kongo kingdom identifier? Els Cranshof, Nicolas Nikis and Pierre de Maret
8. From America to Africa: how Kongo nobility made smoking pipes their own Bernard Clist
9. 'To make book': a conceptual historical approach to Kongo book cultures (sixteenth–nineteenth c.) Inge Brinkman and Koen Bostoen
10. Kongo cosmopolitans in the nineteenth century Jelmer Vos
11. The making of Kongo identity in the American diaspora: a case study from Brazil Linda Heywood.

Subject Areas: Archaeology by period / region [HDD], African history [HBJH], Linguistics [CF], Art styles not defined by date [ACB]