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Kongo
About one fourth of the Africans captured and transported to North America to be sold into slavery were from west central Africa—the Kingdom of Kongo. Of the European descriptions of Kongo (present-day Angola), perhaps the most extensive was written in the mid 1600 by a Roman Catholic missionary, Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi (from Bologna in Italy), who served in Kongo for over twenty years. He also painted a series of watercolors, including those at right, which remained in a private collection. Cavazzi's narrative was edited and published in 1687 as Istorica Descrizione de' Tre Regni Congo, Matamba et Angola, but not with his watercolors. Instead it was illustrated with numerous engravings that Europeanized the Africans (similar to the Europeanization of Native Americans in the engravings of Theodore de Bry published with early narratives of North America). The watercolors were not published until the mid 1980s by the scholar Ezio Bassani. We present here eight of Cavazzi's watercolors with selections from his commentary from Istorica Descrizione. (xx pages.)
Discussion questions
- Compare Cavazzi's 17th-century commentary and illustrations with those of later Europeans in this section. How objective or subjective does he intend to be? How does his decision affect your interpretation of his account?
- What is Cavazzi's attitude toward the people of the Kingdom of Kongo and their rulers? Is he a sympathetic or hostile observer? What leads you to your opinion?
- How do the translations of the watercolor captions influence your interpretation of their subjects? What would the watercolors convey if uncaptioned?
- Compare the Europeans' accounts by "profession"—missionary, diplomat, physician, ethnographer, agent for slave traders—and the motive for their travels to Africa. How do these factors affect their interpretations of Africa and Africans?
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Framing Questions
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How did Africans live in freedom before enslavement? |
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How did Europeans and African Americans perceive African cultures? |
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What was the experience of capture and enslavement for those who became African Americans? |
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Printing
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Supplemental Sites
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Images: Watercolors by Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi, ca. 1660: (1) "Queen Nzinga seated among her maidservants watches a drummer"; (2) the sale of cloth to a leading man, with soldiers in background; first published in Ezio Bassani, ed., "Un Cappuccino nell'Africa nera del seicento: I disegni dei Manoscritti Araldi del Padre Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi da Montecuccolo" ["A Capuchin in Black Africa in the Seventeenth Century: Drawings of the Araldi Manuscript of Father Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi da Montecuccolo"], Quaderni Poro [Milan, Italy] No. 4, 1987, plates 10, 17. Permission pending. Digital images from the online collection The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record, from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and University of Virginia Library. Permission pending.
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