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The Ottomans were not the only dynasty in crisis: the Stuarts in England and Bourbons in France were mired in civil war as the Habsburgs fought for their position in Germany. The European crisis now escalated into a world conflict as the Dutch attacked the Habsburgs in Africa and America.

In 1641, Garcia II, manikongo of Kongo, was determined to expel the Portuguese, ‘who, instead of wanting gold or silver, now trade slaves, who aren’t made of gold or cloth, but are creatures’, and so he invited the Dutch in – a decision that would unleash a war from Brazil to Angola, destroy his own kingdom and intensify the European competition to control sugar and slavery. Ultimately it would open up the Atlantic not to the Dutch, but to a new player: England.

MANIKONGO GARCIA, QUEEN NZINGA AND AHOSU HOUEGBADJA: THREE AFRICAN KINGS

Manikongo Garcia was a hybrid Kongo and Portuguese monarch, ‘dressed in finery, with golden brocade sewn with pearls … on his head the royal crown embossed with the thickest pearls and jewels, his throne of crimson velvet’. He held court amid Flemish tapestries, wearing Indian linens, eating with cutlery of American silver in the company of titled Kongo nobles and bishops in red sashes, while secretaries took dictation. Ruling the region around the Congo River from his capital São Salvador (Mbanza Kongo), Garcia – also named Nkanga a Lukeni a Nzenze a Ntumba – was literate in Portuguese, having been educated by Jesuits, and practised in his private chapel a Catholicism infused with Kongo religion. He was not exactly a victim of Portuguese slave trading: after murdering the king and his own brother, he became notorious for the profits he made from slavery.

Just as the manikongos adopted European trappings, so the Portuguese were becoming increasingly Africanized in a way that was different from other Europeans. Many lançados – outcasts, the original settlers – had settled with African women and had Luso-African children who often adopted African traditions, even scarification, while practising a hybrid of Catholicism and Vodun (voodoo). Lançados married into African dynasties: Tomás Robredo married the daughter of Manikongo Álvaro V. Many Luso-Africans became aggressive slave traders, pombeiros.

Originally the Kongo dynasties were close to Portugal, but the expansion of Luanda and intensification of the slave trade had broken the relationship when the manikongos invited the Dutch to intervene. Now Kongo was being torn apart, not just by the Portuguese but also by incursions by African raiders of uncertain origin, the Jaga, and the Imbangala, a war band with a killing cult, which trained child soldiers initiated with gruesome rites – grinding babies into a grain mill, and cannibalism. Both would thrive in the coming mayhem.

Garcia had a further problem with his southern neighbour, Ndongo, and its remarkable queen. To supply slaves, the Portuguese had first encouraged Ndongo to raid Kongo. Then they tried and failed to conquer Ndongo, which was ruled by a ngola (king) named Mbandi who defeated the Portuguese forces. When Ngola Mbandi was poisoned, his sister, Nzinga Mbande, then in her twenties, seized the throne, keeping her brother’s remains in a reliquary so that he could be consulted. The queen had been baptized and educated by Jesuits, speaking and writing Portuguese. Now she defeated all claimants and seized a neighbouring kingdom, Matamba, hiring her own Imbangala auxiliaries, led by a warlord who called himself Nzinga Mona (Nzinga’s Son). Nzinga constantly facing male challenges, presented herself as a male king, sporting male garb, daggers and spears, enjoying male concubines and proving every bit as good a commander as her male rivals, European or African.

The Portuguese were the only Europeans who really penetrated the African interior: in west Africa, 50 per cent of Europeans died within a year of arriving, whether from malaria, yellow fever or dysentery, making deeper conquest impossible. Since European involvement barely extended beyond the ports, other rulers could handle things differently. The obas of Benin (southern Nigeria) rejected foreign interference; as a Dutch trader noted, ‘When it comes to trade, they are very strict and will not suffer the slightest infringement of their customs, not even an iota can be changed,’ and after the 1520s started to limit direct involvement in slaving – though they appointed the slave-trading obas of Lagos on the Slave Coast, Benini vassals who paid them tribute.

Simultaneously the conquests of a new potentate, Ahosu Houegbadja, a Fon warlord, generated thousands of new slaves that he sold to the Europeans.