In the east were the Seven Kingdoms of Kongo dia Nlaza, considered to be the oldest and most powerful, which likely included Nsundi, Mbata, Mpangu, and possibly Kundi and Okanga.

Mbata in turn was a former province of the Seven Kingdoms of Kongo dia Nlaza whose capital lay farther east along the current border of Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo.

[34] At that point the ruling king, Nzinga a Nkuwu, decided he would become Christian and sent another, large mission headed by Kala ka Mfusu, the noble who had earlier gone to Portugal as a hostage.

[35] The mission returned with Cão along with Catholic priests and soldiers in 1491, baptizing Nzinga a Nkuwu as well as his principal nobles, starting with the ruler of Soyo, the coastal province.

With advisers from Portugal such as Rui d'Aguiar, the Portuguese royal chaplain sent to assist Kongo's religious development, Afonso created a syncretic version of Christianity that would remain a part of its culture for the rest of the kingdom's independent existence.

[9][30] In 1526, Afonso complained in correspondence to King João III of Portugal about merchants' violation of his end of the monopoly, claiming that Portuguese officials had not regulated them sufficiently, and threatened to stop the slave trade altogether.

Álvaro I was not directly descended from a previous king, and so his seizure of the throne in the midst of the crisis caused by the 1568 Jaga invasion marked the beginning of a new royal line, the House of Kwilu.

Álvaro's rule began in war with the Jagas, who may have been external invaders or rebels from within the country, either peasants or nobles from rival factions fighting against the profound changes and instability introduced by European trading and slaving.

As the Jagas drove him from the capital to refuge on an island in the Congo River, Alvaro appealed to Portugal for aid, and was sent an expedition under Francisco de Gouveia Sottomaior, governor of São Tomé.

[citation needed] At the same time as this ecclesiastical problem developed, the governors of Angola began to extend their campaigns into areas that Kongo regarded as firmly under its sovereignty.

Luis Mendes de Vasconcelos, who arrived as governor in 1617, used mercenary African groups called Imbangala to make a devastating war on Ndongo, and then to raid and pillage some southern Kongo provinces.

Many slaves being deported through Luanda fled into this region and were often granted sanctuary, and for this reason, Mendes de Vasconcelos decided that a determined action was needed to stop it.

The next governor of Angola, João Correia de Sousa, used the Imbangala to launch a full-scale invasion of southern Kongo in 1622, following the death of Álvaro III.

However, Pedro II, the newly crowned king of Kongo, brought the main army, including troops from Soyo, down into Mbamba and decisively defeated the Portuguese, driving them from the country at a battle waged somewhere near Mbanda Kasi in January 1623.

[citation needed] As a result of Kongo's victory, the Portuguese merchant community of Luanda revolted against the governor, hoping to preserve their ties with the king.

They were ousted by the opposing House of Nsundi, when Pedro II was placed on the throne by powerful local forces in São Salvador, probably as a compromise when Álvaro III died without an heir old enough to rule.

[citation needed] While Garcia was disappointed that his alliance with the Dutch could not drive out the Portuguese, it did free him to turn his attention to the growing threat posed by the Count of Soyo.

[citation needed] The Dutch were convinced that they could avoid committing their forces to any further wars and made peace with Portugal in 1643, while retaining their military presence in their part of Angola.

[citation needed] Portugal began pressing claims over southern vassals of Kongo, especially the country of Mbwila, following Portuguese restoration at Luanda.

They defeated the forces under António I killing him and many of his courtiers as well as the Luso-African Capuchin priest Manuel Roboredo (also known by his cloister name of Francisco de São Salvador), who had attempted to prevent this final war.

Finally, D Ana Afonso de Leão founded her own center on the Mbidizi River at Nkondo and guided her junior kinsmen to reclaim the country, even as she sought to reconcile the hostile factions.

Such objects produced by many workshops over a long period (given their variety) reflect that emerging belief that Kongo was a central part of the Christian world, and fundamental to its history.

[citation needed] The system of alternating succession broke down in 1764, when Álvaro XI, a Kinlaza, drove out the usurping Kimpanzu king Pedro V (the first to bear this title) and took over the throne.

At the same time, the lands around Mount Kibangu, Pedro IV's original base, was controlled—as it had been for the whole eighteenth century—by members of the Água Rosada family, who claimed descent from both the Kimpanzu and Kinlaza.

André II, who followed Garcia V, appeared to have restored the older rotational claims, as he was from the northern branch of the Kinlaza, whose capital had moved from Matadi to Manga.

[52] While Aleixo de Água Rosada (brother of king Henrique III) ordered a Dembo chief Nambwa Ngôngo not to pay a new Portuguese tax in 1841.

This town had been founded by a man named Kuvo, one of the entrepreneurial nobles, his successors including Garcia made a great deal of controlling markets in the new trading regime.

[citation needed] The kingdom's army consisted of a mass levy of archers, drawn from the general male population, and a smaller corps of heavy infantry, who fought with swords and carried shields for protection.

By the 1580s, however, a musketeer corps, which was locally raised from resident Portuguese and their Kongo-mestiço (mixed race) offspring, was a regular part of the main Kongo army in the capital.

[citation needed] When King Garcia II gave up the island of Luanda and its royal fisheries to the Portuguese in 1651, he switched the kingdom's currency to raffia cloth.