Two African AHC's

[Sphenodon]

• 1. Surviving Boer Republics: While possessing low population and infrastructure, being largely cut off from the outside world, and facing the looming specter of British colonial expansionism, the various Boer republics maintained their independence throughout the 19th century, with a combined defensive by the Orange Free State and South African Republic even managing to secure victory in their first war with the United Kingdom. With a PoD no earlier than 1840, create a scenario in which at least one of the historic Boer republics (or a direct derivative thereof) remains independent through the end of the 19th century and to the present. Bonus for an outline of the political history and present state of the modern country being elaborated upon.

• 2. Surviving Kingdom of Kongo: Between the 15th and 19th centuries, the Kingdom of Kongo maintained substantial contact with Western powers, converting to Roman Catholicism after first contact with and coming to host a complicated relationship with the Kingdom of Portugal before its vassalization (and shortly thereafter abolishment) by the latter following the Congress of Berlin. With a PoD no earlier than 1540, create a scenario wherein the Kingdom of Kongo remains fully independent up to the present time.

 

[water123]

A King of Kongo ends up actually marrying into the Portuguese royal family very early on in Portuguese-Kongo contact. As a dowry, the king asks for a small armada of ships, ostensibly so that his bride could go to Europe whenever she needed. In actuality, the ships are used as prototypes for Kongolese naval expansion; this is bolstered as more powerful interior kingdoms begin to pick apart the peripheral portions of the Kongo. Within a few decades, Kongo works out the kinks of making successful naval vessels out of wood that grew in the area, and thus begins to expand it's influence. Furthermore, a King of the Kongo, perhaps motivated by the population loss in the interior and partially to ward off European "offers," bans the foreign sale of slaves (Individual African kingdoms banning slavery has several historical precedents and Europe for the most part left them alone). At the same time, Portugal ends up settling more in South Africa rather than in Mozambique or Angola, and thus ends up relying more on India and China for slavers rather than Africa. Kongo becomes something of a regional power and perhaps even attempts to set up a handful of colonies on their own, though the Pope would be generally wary of granting colonial charters.

 

[Sphenodon]

A King of Kongo ends up actually marrying into the Portuguese royal family very early on in Portuguese-Kongo contact. As a dowry, the king asks for a small armada of ships, ostensibly so that his bride could go to Europe whenever she needed. In actuality, the ships are used as prototypes for Kongolese naval expansion; this is bolstered as more powerful interior kingdoms begin to pick apart the peripheral portions of the Kongo. Within a few decades, Kongo works out the kinks of making successful naval vessels out of wood that grew in the area, and thus begins to expand it's influence. Furthermore, a King of the Kongo, perhaps motivated by the population loss in the interior and partially to ward off European "offers," bans the foreign sale of slaves (Individual African kingdoms banning slavery has several historical precedents and Europe for the most part left them alone). At the same time, Portugal ends up settling more in South Africa rather than in Mozambique or Angola, and thus ends up relying more on India and China for slavers rather than Africa. Kongo becomes something of a regional power and perhaps even attempts to set up a handful of colonies on their own, though the Pope would be generally wary of granting colonial charters.

Even moreso than an early naval buildup, if you could potentially get royal-level marriage links between the Kongolese and Portugese nobility you could probably stand to put a big damper on the decline in relations the two experienced in the centuries after their initial contact. Getting the Portugese to abandon their colonial ambitions towards Angola would help keep down a big source of friction, and if the two were allied and on decent terms you might even see some detente regarding the massive Portugese appetite for slaves during that period. Increased trade between the Portugese and Kongolese states would also probably serve to help modernize the central power of the Kongo monarchy and prevent the decentralization the kingdom underwent after the late 1500's.

That said, I think getting that initial marriage between the Portugese nobles and Kongolese ones would be a challenge enough; Kongolese Catholicism always had some syncretic elements, and although your royals would probably adhere to a substantially more "refined" version there's the question of whether a noble from a distant African kingdom would be able to posit as a strategically strong and desirable enough marriage candidate over other European nobles. In theory if the two kingdoms end up having substantially more direct involvement there would be some weathering at those barriers, but they are still pretty strong.

I'm not sure about a particularly expansive navally colonial Kongolese empire, for while they have the example of Portugal to go off of they also have the rest of the Congo Basin to the terrestrial interior; granted that large-scale colonial presence in the area would be hard to achieve beyond the use of vassalized native proxies until/without the development of tropical disease medicines, that's still a vast amount of resources to tap into for a nascent modernizing state. If they were to go for some colonial charters, I would presume them to be more in the line of trade-focused outposts designed to help the Kingdom obtain trade goods and commodities that would otherwise be costly imports or simply unavailable. Any ideas as to where they might prioritize?