Kingdom of Loango

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Loango Girl

The Kingdom of Loango was a pre-colonial African state from approximately the 15th century to the 19th century in what is now the Republic of Congo. At its height in the seventeenth century the country stretched from Mayombe in the north to almost the mouth of the Congo River. The inhabitants spoke a northern dialect of the Kikongo language also spoken in the Kingdom of Kongo.

The origins of the kingdom are obscure. The most ancient complex society in the region was at Madingo Kayes, which was already a multi-site settlement in the first century CE. However, later developments in the region are obscure. Loango is not mentioned in early traveler's accounts of the region, nor is it mentioned in the titles of King Afonso I of Kongo in 1535, though Kakongo and Ngoyo, its southern neighbors are, and the earliest account of the country written in the late 1580s relates from tradition that it had once been subject to the Kingdom of Kongo but at that point had become the friend and ally of Kongo only. More detailed tradition recorded by Dutch visitors in the 1630s relate that the kingdom was originally a part of Kakongo, itself once a part of Kongo, which broke away to become independent, probably around 1550.

Little is known of the city other than the fact that it was an advanced African city, whose economy was largely supported by slavery in the 1800s. The city's demise began shortly after the abolition of the slave trade in America, where many of the slaves were then sold.