Portuguese in Angola

At the end of the fifteenth century Portuguese navigators exploring the West African coast made contact with the powerful Kingdom of Kongo, a centralized Bantu state whose capital, Mbanza Kongo, lay in the region of present-day northern Angola. The Portuguese established relations with its ruler, the manikongo, and stationed envoys at the court.

The Kongo king Nzinga a Nkuwu accepted baptism and converted to Catholicism, taking the Christian name Joao I, and his son Afonso I made Christianity central to the kingdom and cultivated close ties with Portugal, exchanging missionaries, craftsmen, and diplomats.

Relations soured as Portuguese demand for enslaved labour, especially for the plantations of Sao Tome and later Brazil, drove an expanding slave trade that destabilized the region. In 1575 the Portuguese founded Luanda further south and pushed inland, drawing them into prolonged conflict with the Kongo and the neighbouring kingdom of Ndongo, and laying the foundations of the colony of Angola.