Chapter 7
A House For All Africa
Excerpt from “The House of Mbata: A House for All Africa” by Dr. Henry Renault; University of Paris Press, © 1979
…What is most impressive about the House of Mbata in the early Kongo Empire is its ability to manipulate Kongo society and its environs almost unilaterally in its efforts to consolidate power. No aspect of the empire was safe from the house’s vast influence, religion, language, traditions, customs, even cuisine all saw changes lead by the Mbata with the sole purpose of gathering as much power as possible. Indeed the political maneuverings were so skilled and complex that historians today, including myself, are unsure if the Mbatan monarchs were brilliant, lucky, or victims of extremely unlikely circumstances.
The best answer seems to be all of the above. Thomas I used the random happenstance arrival of the European monks and St. Charles of Africa to become the champion of the faith and the new Kongo society in a gamble for power. He played his enemies off against each other and used the church as his medium for attacks or rewards for enemies or allies. As Thomas I’s cultural revolution in the Kongo region began to take hold it found itself fueled by three district groups each with their advantages and disadvantages.
The first group obviously is the European monks and Charles himself. These monks needed a leader and strong ally like Thomas to pave the way secularly for their spiritual work. The second group are those Christian converts that acted with great zeal that many newly converted people often do. These people fanatically supported Charles as he was virtually the only secular leader in the region who embraced them instead of pushed them away. Of course we know today that Thomas embraced them tentatively in the long run because their zeal often alienated moderate and more cautious Kongoese, but they made a good initial base for Thomas’ rise to power. The final group were those Kongoese who joined Thomas because he represented an immediate springboard to power. Kongo culture at the time was extremely traditional and conservative and the political aspects were dominated by elders that many young Kongoese saw as a roadblock to progress and wealth. Thomas represented an outlet to bypass the traditional routes to power and many young ambitious Kongoese took that bypass; so what if they had to swear fealty to Thomas as the new Manikongo, at least they would no longer have to wait in the wings for old backwards chieftains to die before being able to accomplish anything. And along the way many of these ambitious but moderate Kongoese would convert to Christianity and embraced Thomas’ counterculture as those aspects became the fad of the day and the religion and culture themselves maintained their Kongoese appearance and feel instead of acting as European cultural imperialism, a worse case scenario many Kongoese were afraid might come to fruition.
So through these distinct support bases Thomas was able to cultivate a cultural revolution in Kongo society. Using new schools of thought imported from the Europeans when it came to war Thomas was able to back up his efforts with military victories when necessary and brilliantly maintained a defensive image instead of that of a conqueror; once again staying moderate and making sure not to play to people’s fears of a
de facto European invasion.
But the real impacts of the House of Mbata’s will came once Thomas I took the throne and was confirmed by his supporters and chieftains as the Manikongo. It is also interesting to see how the various members of the House of Mbata played their roles in changing Kongo culture. Thomas I acting as the foundation layer, dabbling in many aspects of Kongoese society but not going overboard on any one area. Thomas II proved to be a champion of the judiciary, laying down codified Kongo Law and enforcing a civil law of the land. John the Great would take this further and expand legal reforms and codification into the realms of land ownership and political hierarchy, two areas that remained contentiously vague until John’s reign.
We will start with the foundations laid down by Thomas I. While the legal proceedings and issues surrounding land ownership and reform didn’t occur until John the Great’s reign, Thomas I did actively practice a crude version of European feudalism with the concept of land ownership at the center. Until the arrival of the Europeans Kongoese lands, and indeed many lands in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, were tribal in ownership and reflected the realities of low population density. A family unit would own a shelter and perhaps a garden in a village made up of several kandas (houses). All of the villages that were tribal Kongoese constituted the Kongo region. The forests and lands in-between were tentatively shared, but often times conflicted over, by the tribe as a whole for hunting, gathering, etc. Even in the village unit as is traditional in Kongo society, hospitality and closeness as of great importance so for many years personal property was a loose concept.
It was Thomas who used his power to reward supporters with land and confiscate property from enemies. In addition to their new lands Thomas delegated some powers and used these new nobles to run a region and raise supplies and warriors. It was at this time that the power structure of Kongoese nobility began to be established. The House of Mbata was at the top holding the title of Manikongo, below them were the three power houses of Lazani, Mvika, and Kziliu; the three houses Mbata would make ducal by granting extensive privileges to the heads of those houses as dukes. Below those three special houses lie several dozen barons awarded with some powers (though not as extensive as the dukes) and lands. At the bottom were those Kongoese that now resided on some nobles land and now owed an annual in-kind tax, normally a share of yams or some chickens depending on the harvest that year. These commoners owned unofficial fealty to their feudal lord but the most service they owed at first was giving themselves or a son to that nobles’ service when Mbata called on his nobles for warriors. In fact the system was so vague and new that the concept of being tied to the land didn’t yet exist and it wasn’t uncommon for commoners to shift from one noble’s land to the next depending on growing conditions and the severity of the tax.
Tithes and taxes in general were also loose concepts. The House of Mbata, theoretically as the holders of the Manikongo position, had the power to call on supplies and often exercised this privilege during times of war, which during the early days of the Kongo Empire was almost all the time. This in effect forced the nobles to up their calls for supplies from their commoners, thus this early in-kind tax was loose and constantly in flux and in very few places was the tax unreasonable. In addition the only people that owed a tithe to the church were the nobles themselves and even this was an unwritten code of honor to support the church and its effort and no one followed the rule of one-tenth; some like more traditional Barons barely gave a third while the rich House of Mbata frequently gave more than fifteen percent. This is highly contrary to Europe where everyone paid the tithe and it was required by law. The early Kongo Catholic Church, especially under Charles, was not strict on calling for tithes, indeed the church didn’t even truly have the structure to enforce or calculate such things early on nor very far from St. Victor, Mbanza Kongo, or an abbey.
In later chapters we shall discuss Thomas I’s brilliant use of European tactics to revolutionize African warfare and seeing as we have already covered the initial founding of the Kongoese Catholic Church, this is a good place to transition to the reforms of Thomas II…
One of the ?joys? (depending on how one takes correction), is the vast amounts of obscure knowledge that people on this site have. My own TL has had to shift course a couple of times when someone says 'But according to the XXX Act of 1739, ...'