Kingdom of Ndongo

The Kingdom of Ndongo, formerly known as Dongo or Angola, is the name of an early-modern African state located in what is modern -day Angola.

The Kingdom of Ndongo is first recorded in the sixteenth century. It was one of a number of vassal states to Kongo that existed in the region, though Ndongo was the most powerful of these with a king called the Ngola.

Little is known of the kingdom in the early sixteenth century. "Angola" was listed among the titles of the King of Kongo in 1535, so it is likely that it was in somewhat subordinate to Kongo. Its own oral traditions, collected in the late sixteenth century, particularly by the Jesuit Baltasar Barreira, described the founder of the kingdom, Ngola Kiluanje, also known as "Ngola Inene", as a migrant from Kongo, but the head of a Kimbundu speaking ethnic group.

Social and Political Structure

The Kimbundu-speaking region was known as the land of Mbundu, and according to late sixteenth-century accounts, it was divided into 736 small political units ruled by sobas. These sobas and their territories (called murinda) were compact groupings of villages (senzala or libatas, probably following the Kikongo term divata) surrounding a small central town (mbanza).