Knowledge is Power: Politics and Formal Education in the Sixteenth-Century Kongo Kingdom

Abstract

This paper takes us to the beginning of the sixteenth century in the West Central African kingdom of Kongo, some years after Portuguese navigators first established contact with the Kongo royal elite. A formal school system was introduced with the support of the Kongo king Afonso I – who ruled from 1509 to 1542 – as he used the Christian school system to integrate the districts of the kingdom more fully into political unity. Apart from this centralising tendency, there was at the same time a process to establish contacts abroad. Quite a few young Kongo men of noble birth were sent to schools at convents in Portugal to be trained as church staff, interpreters or ambassadors of the Kongo kingdom. These two tendencies – internally oriented centralisation and externally oriented internationalisation – will be discussed in the light of the developments of the school system in the Kongo kingdom in the sixteenth century and beyond. This will lead to an interpretation of the Kongo school system in terms of global integration and local appropriation.