Loango slavery harbour

This site is limited by: Pointe Indienne to the Southeast, Atlantic Ocean to the South and to the Southwest, to the North-West the village of Matombi and to the northeast the small town of Diosso, the former administrative district of Bwali, capital of the Kingdom of Loango.

Focusing on Portuguese activities and archives, these studies have obscured the operation of trade in the Loango coast, a kind of "free zone" where local, British, French and Dutch merchants played a key role.

[5] If we combine the numbers of Central Africa (Angola and Loango) and those of the East Coast, we find that nearly 6.2 million of slaves (about half of the total) are from countries speaking Bantu languages.

Before 1660, the Europeans travelled to the coast of Loango to obtain supplies of fabrics, ivory, rare wood (okoume, Padouk) and elephant tails.

[12] However, between 1608 and 1612, thanks to the interpersonal skills of Pieter van den Broecke, Dutch merchants installed factories in Mayumba and on Loango Bay to provide copper and ivory spikes.

On the other hand, the governor promised to buy all the stocks of ivory and copper, to provide better quality products, to ensure his protection in the event of an enemy invasion and finally to send Jesuit priests to baptize the Ma Loango.

At the end of the seventeenth century, with the disparting of the Kingdom of Kongo, the Loango also extended its influence towards the south by inaugurating a new model of road networks.

[14] Joseph Kimfoko Madoungou[15][16](who has since a well-deserved retirement), is the former curator of the Museum of Diosso, located nearby, and has served as a guide to visitors to the harbour.

In fact, these trees were first transported to Central and western Africa in the cargo of Portuguese ships of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries from their original domestication centres, India and Southeast Asia.

The arrival of Mango in Africa, and then in Brazil, was part of a world trade of exotic fruits that included pineapple (Ananas comosus), banana (Musa), guava (Psidium Guajava), to name but a few examples.

[8] From the point of view of tradition, Father Raphael Nzaou, the head of the Catholic mission of Loango provides two explanations on the symbolic and origin of these mango trees.

He adds that "it is planned to build an African city of arts surrounded by museums in the open air, in order to enhance the old port of embarkation of slaves."