After a brief attempt of reading it 12 years ago, we finally went back and finished The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition 1641-1718 by John K. Thornton. A short study based on his thesis, Thornton endeavors to elucidate a process of historical change in an African polity. Since the Kongo kingdom before the 2nd half of the 17th century was a centralized, town-centered polity in which Mbanza Kongo dominated a large territory, one must understand what led it to become a fragmented, decentralized state with a village-centered economy. Thornton, differing from other scholars, does not see the Portuguese in Angola as a primary or major factor at all in this development. Instead, the origin of the process was in the ability of Nsoyo to rise to prominence as a competing (and independent mbanza) which destabilized a centralized polity based on Mbanza Kongo.
However, in order to understand exactly what transpired in Kongo from the reign of Garcia II to 1718, one must comprehend how the Kongo state operated before the civil wars of the post-Mbwila years. Thornton's thesis relies on an understanding of Kongo society, administration, economy and religion mainly drawn written sources. The changes in Kongo oral traditions already apparent in the 18th century, and those of the 20th century, reflect changes that may mislead researchers who rely too heavily on modern ethnographies or oral traditions to reconstruct the earlier past of Kongo. So, with that perspective and drawing on textual sources, Thornton develops a model of Kongo state and society. It was a society of nobility and powerful kings based in Mbanza Kongo, with the latter appointing provincial nobility to administer provinces that yielded taxes. The nobility and ruler, however, did not control production in the villages. Instead, peasant producers retained control of production and simply paid taxes to the state (and the kitomi and nkuluntu. In the mbanza, or towns, which were really overgrown villages, the aristocracy were able to control production through the use of slave labor. By concentrating large numbers of people in the mbanza and controlling production through the exploitation of slaves (who, were more akin to European serfs), the nobility were able to accumulate much larger surpluses than what the villages could provide.
One mbanza, the royal capital, far surpassed all others and the dream of the Kongo nobility was to find a position in the capital where access to luxury goods and control of greater surpluses was possible. With the exception of Nsoyo, no other town in Kongo rivaled the capital. The Kongo order that was perhaps at its height during the reign of Garcia II, was able to thus impose a system that brought in revenue from taxes on villages and used the royal court to appoint, remove, and circulate nobility in various provinces. The nobility wanted to be in Mbanza Kongo and Kongo kings could use this central economic role of Mbanza Kongo to reward loyal and faithful dependents. The royal household and the nobility functioned as houses, comparable to those of medieval Europe. Competition within houses for the throne or for access to the spoils of power did, inevitably, occur. But the centralizing status and nature of Kongo as the economic, social and political capital ensured that even rivals to the throne or competitors wanted to be in Mbanza Kongo instead of eking an existence in the countryside with meager surplus or despoiled peasants.
In a sense, Hilton and Thornton have similar perspectives on how the decline of Mbanza Kongo and a centralized Kongo was related to economic concerns. It was not so much the Portuguese victory in 1665 that finally caused the decline of Kongo. Instead, it was the closer, internal threat represented by Nsoyo, an autonomous province with its own economically important mbanza and access to Atlantic trade, which revealed the changes on the horizon. Soon, after 1665, various contenders, often from the Kinlanzi and Kimpanzu houses, fought for decades for control of Mbanza Kongo. The capital was sacked during these civil wars and the nobility, dispersed into the rural provinces where chances for greater amounts of surplus to expropriate wealth were minimal, became permanently based in the rural areas and relied on the Kongo peasant producers (who retained control of production). While the civil wars created conditions in which some nobles could seize captives and sell them, or loot, none of the nobles were powerful enough to permanently seize Mbanza Kongo and restore a unified kingdom. Furthermore, Nsoyo interfered throughout the civil wars of the late 17th century, promoting rival claimants to the throne but never providing enough support for them to succeed. Indeed, a reunified Kongo would actually have posed a threat to Nsoyo, which preserved much of pre-civil war Kongo administrative structure and enjoyed prosperous trade links with the Dutch, Vili and others north of the Zaire.
In the end, Kongo survived its period of civil wars to reemerge as a fragmented state by 1718. By this date, however, the king was a far weaker figure and the provincial nobility were mostly autonomous. Christianity remained important, especially for the nobility, and indeed religion played an important role in the later years of the civil wars during the Antonian movement. According to Thornton, Dona Beatriz's movement, which was popular and helped repopulate Mbanza Kongo, also sought to have her ritually install the next Kongo king, like the kitomi. Instead of some sort of anti-colonial movement, Dona Beatriz's movement wanted to restore a united Kongo while also demonstrating the ways in which Christianity had been so adapted and incorporated into Kongo cosmology. Ultimately, the Kongo that was restored in the 18th century was to forever lose the pattern of centralized authority with kings appointing nobility to provincial posts and with a large degree of control of production in mbanza based on slave labor.
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