A History of West Central Africa to 1850 (New Approaches to African History, Series Number 15)

"Based on substantial new research from primary sources and archives, this accessible interpretative history of West Central Africa from earliest times to 1852 gives comprehensive and in-depth coverage of the region. With equal focus given to both internal histories or inter-state interactions and external dynamics and relationships, this study represents an original approach to regional histories which goes beyond the existing scholarship on the area. By contextualising and expanding its range, to include treatment of the Portuguese colony of Angola, John K. Thornton provides new understandings of significant events, people, and inter-regional interactions which aid the grounding of the history of West Central Africa within a broader context. A valuable resource to students and scholars of African history." "For purposes of this study, I am defining West Central Africa largely by the watershed of the Congo River. If the region has a hydrographic center, it is the Lunda Plateau in eastern Angola, a relatively flat region at roughly 1000 meters elevation, origin of many of the largest effluents of the Congo. This highland continues eastward until it reaches the great range of mountains that define the Rift Valley, and separate it from the Nile system. Because human geography is not always identical to natural geography, there are additions to this defined space. An important addition is the rivers that drain from the low mountains that define the western end of the Congo watershed that flow westward into the Atlantic Ocean which are included in the study because many political units had borders that straddled the two, like the kingdoms of Ndongo and Kasanje which were regularly engaged on both sides of the Kwango watershed, or the Luyana Kingdom which lay squarely in the Zambezi River watershed but was in substantial communication with the Lunda Empire. I have also left out the river systems that flow southward into the Congo from the Central African Republic, and the great northern bend of the Congo that they nourish because there was very little engagement by areas lying south of that with them or that is identified in the present historiography"-- Provided by publisher Contents Maps Preface Introduction 1 The Development of States in West Central Africa to 1540 2 The Struggle for Ambundu and the Founding of Angola 3 Ndongo and Portugal at War 4 Queen Njinga’s Struggle for Ndongo 5 The Thirty Years War Comes to Central Africa 6 The Emergence of Lunda 7 The Weight of Lunda on the West 8 Culmination: Lunda, Luba, and the Ovimbundu Epilogue Index An original interpretative history for students or scholars of West Central Africa from earliest times to 1852 which benefits from comprehensive and in-depth treatment of internal histories, inter-state interactions, and external relationships for an original approach to regional histories.