Kingdom of Kakongo

Kakongo was a small kingdom on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, in what is now the Republic of the Congo and Cabinda Province of Angola. Its people spoke a dialect of Kikongo and may be counted among the Bakongo; in the thirteenth century the region formed part of a confederation led by Vungu. Kakongo is first mentioned in the titles of King Afonso I of Kongo in 1535, which has led historians to believe that it once belonged to a federation of states that included Kongo, although it was independent in practice from the sixteenth century onward. Together with its neighbours Ngoyo and Loango it became an important commercial centre in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Portuguese merchants interested in copper, ivory and slaves established factories in the 1620s, and Dutch and English ships followed during the seventeenth century. Its capital, Kinguele, was an inland town, while the port in the protected bay of Cabinda handled most of the trade; slaves dominated exports, though many were transhipped from Kongo and Angola, alongside gunpowder, cloth, beads, copper and iron. In 1775 a French mission tried and failed to convert the kingdom to Christianity. In 1885 Kakongo was absorbed into the Portuguese Congo.