Podcast: Brazil's Black Kingdom
How Enslaved Africans Created Their Own Nation
The last main episode of Black History Unveiled explored the rise and fall of the Kingdom of Kongo, a powerful Central African state that suffered a devastating blow at the hands of the Portuguese in 1665. In the aftermath, Kongo not only lost its king but also saw much of its nobility captured, enslaved, and forcibly taken across the Atlantic.
Most of them vanished into the brutal anonymity of the transatlantic slave trade, their names erased from history. But not all. Some survived the passage of time. One such figure is Ganga Zumba.
Leading a daring escape, he and other fugitives from slavery carved out a stronghold deep in the jungles of Brazil.
This is the story of how enslaved Africans fought back, built their own nation, and came close to toppling the Portuguese colonial power.
You’ll find the Black History Unveiled podcast below or wherever you get your podcasts.
Sources used in the episode:
Books:
Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience by Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr (1999)
Medieval Africa, 1250–1800 by Roland Oliver and Anthony Atmore (2001)
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild (2001)
The History of Congo by Didier Gondola (2002)
Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa by Paul E. Lovejoy (2012)
Africa’s Development in Historical Perspective by Emmanuel Akyeampong, Robert H. Bates, Nathan Nunn and James Robinson (editors) (2014)
The Fortunes of Africa: A 5000 Year History of Wealth, Greed, and Endeavor by Martin Meredith (2014)
The Color Line: A History: The Story Of Europe And The African, From The Old World To The New by Ethan Malveaux (2015)
Kongo: Power and Majesty by Alisa LaGamma (2015)
Scholarly articles:
”Early Kongo-Portuguese Relations: A New Interpretation” by John K. Thornton in History in Africa (vol. 8, 1981)
”The Art of War in Angola, 1575–1680” by John K. Thornton in Comparative Studies in Society and History (vol. 30, nr 2, 1988)
"The Origins and Early History of the Kingdom of Kongo, c. 1350-1550" by John K. Thornton in The International Journal of African Historical Studies (vol. 34, nr. 1, 2001)
”Kongo Slavery Remembered by Themselves: Texts from 1915” by Wyatt MacGaffey in The International Journal of African Historical Studies (vol. 41, nr 1, 2008)
"Slavery and Its Transformation in the Kingdom of Kongo" by Linda M. Heywood in The Journal of African History (vol. 50, nr. 1, 2009).
”The Kingdom of Kongo and the Thirty Years’ War” by John K. Thornton in The Journal of World History (vol. 27, nr 2, 2016).
Articles:
"Art historian Cécile Fromont uncovers Kongo’s Christian visual culture" by Mike Cummings for Yale News (March 5, 2019).