John K Thornton
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 136609 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | John K Thornton |
| NOMBRES | John K |
| APELLIDO | Thornton |
| FIRMA | THORNTON J K |
| AFILIACIONES | Boston University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8760-2634 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 120 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 948 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 120 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1977 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 18 |
The Emergence of Social and Political Complexity in West Central Africa
Using new interpretations of oral traditions written in older documents, this article changes the origin of complex societies and larger kingdoms. Showing that the Kingdom of Kongo, presently believed to be the origin of large kingdoms actually achieved it status by conquering an existing kingdom, called Mpemba, the author reassigns both the date and origin point of kingdom level polities there. The author further points to new interpretations of…
Inventing an African Alphabet
Wabeladio Payi, the subject of this fascinating book by Sarró, was a remarkable man. A prophet who saw visions, a mathematical genius, and an artist, he created a special alphabet for writing Kikongo called Mandombe. This alphabet itself has evolved into an intellectual enterprise, drawn from a spiritual epiphany, and elevated to a mathematical system.Wabeladio grew up in the Kikongo speaking part of the Democratic Republic of Congo and was affil…
How Jesus became Black
The Kingdom of Kongo is notable for its conversion to Christianity in the late fifteenth century and as continuing as a Christian country for the rest of its independent existence. Its conversion and the propagation and maintenance are widely believed to be the work of foreign missionaries, disrupted by a nationalist reconception of Christian history by D Beatriz Kimpa Vita, a prophetess possessed by Saint Anthony in 1704. New documentary discove…
Mwene Muji
Although the Lower Kasai was identified by Jan Vansina as a likely center for highly complex societies, he failed to recognize that sixteenth-century sources had mentioned the Empire of Mwene Muji as a large polity in that region. Studying the well known and recently discovered literature on West Central Africa, as well as a critical study of oral tradition, shows considerable evidence for the antiquity and existence of Mwene Muji
Rethinking D. Beatriz Kimpa Vita for Contemporary Times
The Florentine Relation
A newly discovered Spanish description of Kongo increases our knowledge of the country, joining Filippo Pigafetta’s famous account to expand our knowledge of Kongo in this early period. This research shows that the MS was written in 1587 or 1588 and was written by Carmelite Diego de la Encarnación. It adds details on the history of the country, daily life culture, and links to other Carmelite works, including an unpublished chapter of an account …
K ongomania and the N umbers G ame
In response to two pieces I wrote in the 1990s, and a section of my book Cultural History of the Atlantic World (2012), David Geggus has charged me with fomenting “Kongomania.” I am a specialist in the history of the Kingdom of Kongo, it is true, and in both pieces, Kongo's history was an important part of the argument. In spite of my own fondness for Kongo and its role in the world, I plead not guilty
New Light on the "Jaga" Episode in the History of Kongo (1567-1608)
The origin and nature of the Jaga invasion of Kongo is one of the longest standing debates in Africa's historiography. This project, using a number of newly discovered documents, argues that the invasion was not a local revolt, did not stem from a constitutional crisis, and that it involved a small but highly competent army that entered the country through the Empire of Mwene Muji during the reign of king Bernardo I
Palmares revisitado
Resenha de: LARA, Silvia Hunold. Palmares & Cucaú: o aprendizado da dominação. São Paulo: EdUSP, 2021. 451 p. LARA, Silvia Hunold; e Fachin, Phablo Roberto Marchis (orgs.). Guerra contra Palmares: o manuscrito de 1678. São Paulo: Chão Editora, 2021. 230 p
Revising the Population History of the Kingdom of Kongo
Research conducted into the demography of the Kingdom of Kongo some forty years ago, employing baptismal statistics left by missionaries, has been in need of revision thanks to challenges by more recent scholarship. This article revises the estimated population of Kongo by addressing these challenges, drawing on newly discovered documentary sources. Using this new evidence, the estimate for the kingdom's population in the mid-seventeenth century …
Firearms, Diplomacy, and Conquest in Angola
This chapter discusses the Portuguese conquest of Angola, which commenced in 1575 and, in many respects, was completed in 1671. The conquest of Angola was hardly spectacular by Spanish standards, as it took over only about half the kingdom of Ndongo, its principal target, and at the end of the wars, Portugal controlled just a small sliver of land, mostly along the coast and the banks of two rivers, whose course was largely through inhospitable se…
A History of West Central Africa to 1850
The Development of States in West Central African to 1540 -- The Struggle for Ambundu and the Founding of Angola -- Ndongo and Portugal at War -- Queen Njinga's Struggle for Ndongo -- The Thirty Years' War Comes to Central Africa -- The Emergence of Lunda -- The Weight of Lunda on the West -- Culmination: Lunda, Luba and the Ovimbundu
The Golden Rhinoceros
When I entered graduate school to study African history in 1971, there was a great feeling of excitement in the air. We were in the midst of the discovery of African history and revealing it to the
Soyo and Kongo
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The Origins of Kongo
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Slavery's Metropolis
For historians of the United States, the study of slavery in those parts of the country that were once under the domination of countries other than Great Britain, especially those employing Roman law or its derivatives, are far richer and easier to write than elsewhere. Rashauna Johnson has made full use of French and Spanish legal traditions to provide a rich and detailed history of slavery in New Orleans in the revolutionary period. The extensi…
Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic World
Book Review| May 01 2018 Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic World: Angola and Brazil during the Era of the Slave Trade Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic World: Angola and Brazil during the Era of the Slave Trade. By Ferreira, Roquinaldo. African Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Maps. Figures. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xiii, 262 pp. Paper, $27.99. John K. Thornton John K. Thornton Boston University Search for othe…
The Art of War in Angola, 1575– 1680
This chapter reviews more briefly the development of war in Europe and the way in which Europeans fit into and altered the Angolan system of fighting. There was no writing in central Africa when Europeans arrived there in 1483, and much of the first century of Afro-European contact is inadequately documented, at least as far as military affairs go. Indeed, it was at least partly in this tradition as an ally of Ndongo that the Portuguese "conquero…
Armed Slaves and Political Authority in Africa in the Era of the Slave Trade, 1450–1800
How Useful is the Concept of Slaving Zones? Some Thoughts from the Experience of Dahomey and Kongo
Paul E. Lovejoy. Jihād in West Africa during the Age of Revolutions
When the modern study of African history began in earnest in the 1960s, one of the earliest topics to be taken up was the question of “the Jihads” of West Africa. It was long before the vexed questions of Islamic extremism that mark today’s work, and the question was largely an academic one. In 1960, “the Jihads” meant the declaring of a jihad in what would become northern Nigeria by Usuman dan Fodio (also spelled Usman) in 1804, and the building…
Placing the Military in African History
While discussions of the military are notably absent in academic African History, it doesn’t mean that the subject is absent from the history left by the Africans. Sources that have been used for generations contain extensive discussions of the organization, arming, training, and utilization of military forces in Africa by Africans, but these aspects of the sources are largely ignored or interpreted within the frame of other violent activity, suc…
The Zambos and the Transformation of the Miskitu Kingdom, 1636-1740
The early eighteenth century witnessed the rise to power of the Miskitu Zambos within the Miskitu Kingdom on the Caribbean coast of Honduras and Nicaragua. The Zambos were the offspring of African slaves from a pirated slave ship and the indigenous inhabitants of the region engaged in long-range raiding. Their rise is explained here by showing that the original core of the group, some 200 slaves taken from two Portuguese vessels by Dutch privatee…
Igbo in the Atlantic World
Une archéologie des provinces septentrionales du royaume Kongo
It has been unfortunate that the kingdom of Kongo, one of Africa’s best known and best documented pre-colonial states, should not have been subjected to intensive archaeological work. However, asid
Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800
This book explores Africa's involvement in the Atlantic world from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth century. It focuses especially on the causes and consequences of the slave trade, in Africa, in Europe, and in the New World. African institutions, political events, and economic structures shaped Africa's voluntary involvement in the Atlantic arena before 1680. Africa's economic and military strength gave African elites the capacity to dete…
The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1491–1750
Scholarly opinion on the conversion of the Kingdom of Kongo to Christianity has generally been that it was superficial, diplomatically oriented, impure, dangerous to national sovereignty or rejected by the mass of the population. This article argues that although Christianity in Kongo took a distinctly African form it was widely accepted both in Kongo and in Europe as being the religion of the country. This was possible because Kongo, as a volunt…
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
Demography and History in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1550–1750
It has long been generally supposed that the kingdom of Kongo suffered a severe decline in population due to the civil wars of the seventeenth century and the slave trade. These figures are derived from literary estimates made by travellers and missionaries of the time. New estimates of population can be obtained by combining the statistics of baptisms left by the missionaries who lived in Kongo with a reconstruction of the age structure of the k…
Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500-1800
Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500-1800 investigates the impact of warfare on the history of Africa in the period of the slave trade and the founding of empires. It includes the discussion of:: * the relationship between war and the slave trade * the role of Europeans in promoting African wars and supplying African armies * the influence of climatic
Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680
This book explores Africa's involvement in the Atlantic world from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth century. It focuses especially on the causes and consequences of the slave trade, in Africa, in Europe, and in the New World. African institutions, political events, and economic structures shaped Africa's voluntary involvement in the Atlantic arena before 1680. Africa's economic and military strength gave African elites the capacity to dete…
Afro-Christian Syncretism in the Kingdom of Kongo
This article examines the way in which Christianity and Kongo religion merged to produce a syncretic result. After showing that the Kongo church grew up under the supervision and direction of Kongo authorities rather than missionaries, it will track how local educational systems and linguistic transformations accommodated the differences between the two religious traditions. In Kongo, many activities associated with the traditional religion were …
Soundings in Atlantic History
List of Illustrations * Introduction: Reflections on Some Major Themes [Bernard Bailyn] *1. Ecology, Seasonality, and the Transatlantic Slave Trade [Stephen D. Behrendt] *2. Kongo and Dahomey, 1660--1815: African Political Leadership in the Era of the Slave Trade and Its Impact on the Formation of African Identity in Brazil [Linda M. Heywood and John K. Thornton] *3. The Triumphs of Mercury: Connection and Controlin the Emerging Atlantic Economy …
On the Trail of Voodoo
Scholars have long taken interest in the conversion of African slaves to Christianity in the New World which have mixed, to one degree or another, African religious forms with Christianity. The process has been studied in greatest depth by sociologists, such as Roger Bastide, anthropologists like Melville Herskovitts or art historians such as Robert Farris Thompson. Although the most devoted of the scholars concerned with this have not been histo…
African Dimensions of the Stono Rebellion
Early Kongo-Portuguese Relations
One of the most durable myths of the history of central Africa is that of the early subversion and domination of the kingdom of Kongo by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. Its original statement was made by James Duffy in 1959 and was amplified by Basil Davidson two years later. According to this argument the Portuguese had found a well-developed kingdom of Kongo when they reached the mouth of the Zaire River in 1483, and had entered into a…
Cannibals, Witches, and Slave Traders in the Atlantic World
Monzolo,' from the small marquisate of Nzolo in the extreme east of the Kingdom of Kongo,2 then enslaved and residing in Cartagena, described some of his reactions to his passage across the Atlantic. He noted the fear that his fellow slaves had in crossing the sea, for they left their own country, they believed that the Spanish, whom they called the whites,3 brought them to kill them and to make the flags for the ships from their remains, for whe…
African Dimensions of the Stono Rebellion
Journal Article African Dimensions of the Stono Rebellion Get access John K. Thornton John K. Thornton Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 96, Issue 4, October 1991, Pages 1101–1113, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/96.4.1101 Published: 01 October 1991
The Kingdom of Kongo
The Kingdom of Kongo
The Kongolese Saint Anthony
This book tells the story of the Christian religious movement led by Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita in the Kingdom of Kongo from 1704 until her death, by burning at the stake, in 1706. Beatriz, a young woman, claimed to be possessed by St Anthony, argued that Jesus was a Kongolese, and criticized Italian Capuchin missionaries in her country for not supporting black saints. The movement was largely a peace movement, with a following among the common peop…
Legitimacy and Political Power
Queen Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba has recently been viewed as a usurper of the throne, largely because some contemporary documents describe her as such. But the issue of legitimacy to rule in Ndongo was a complex one, based not on a fixed constitution but a set of contradictory historical precedents which were cited to establish authority. Njinga managed to find such precedents to support her claims, which were further reinforced by her control …
Precolonial African Industry and the Atlantic Trade, 1500-1800
New Light on Cavazzi's Seventeenth-Century Description of Kongo
The very full description of west central Africa given in Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi da Montecuccolo's book, Istorica Descrizione de’ tre regni Congo, Matamba ed Angola , first published in 1687, has long been one of the most important sources for the reconstruction of the social, political, economic, and religious history of these three Central African states in the seventeenth century. This is true even though it has long been known that Cavazzi …
Warfare in Atlantic Africa 1500-1800
Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500-1800 investigates the impact of warfare on the history of Africa in the period of the slave trade and the founding of empires. It includes the discussion of: : * the relationship between war and the slave trade * the role of Europeans in promoting African wars and supplying African armies * the influence of climatic and ecological factors on warfare patterns and dynamics * the impact of social organization and mil…
The Kongolese Saint Anthony
Elite Women in the Kingdom of Kongo
Discussions of women’s power in Africa often focus on how much the role of senior women is symbolic and how much is real. Studying the Kingdom of Kongo reveals that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries women initially exercised power indirectly through influence on male relatives. However, following the beginning of the civil war after 1665 women began to exercise more open and overt power, taking effective control of some sections of the c…
The Art of War in Angola, 1575-1680
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The Kingdom of Kongo and the Thirty Years’ War
The Thirty Years’ War, while still regarded as primarily a European war, also has, as some historians recognize, an Atlantic dimension. That Atlantic dimension in turn is widely recognized as centering on the Dutch Republic’s seizure of Bahia and then Pernambuco in Brazil, and on the other side of the Atlantic, the island colony of São Tomé, the Portuguese fort at Elmina, and the biggest African prize, the colony of Angola, a project that Dutch h…
Death and the Invisible Powers. The World of Kongo Belief
PREFACE ONE The Spirituality of a Communal People Beginning with Community The Kongo People The Land of Manianga: Isolation and Rejection Gender and Community Structure The Cohesiveness of the Community Communal Life as the Goal of Existence The Clan The Role of the Chief The Flow of Living Power from the Ancestors Family Relationships Seniority Marriage The Individual Tension between the Public and the Personal TWO The Communal Response to Death…
Demography and History in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1550–1750
It has long been generally supposed that the kingdom of Kongo suffered a severe decline in population due to the civil wars of the seventeenth century and the slave trade. These figures are derived from literary estimates made by travellers and missionaries of the time. New estimates of population can be obtained by combining the statistics of baptisms left by the missionaries who lived in Kongo with a reconstruction of the age structure of the k…
A Resurrection for the Jaga
J. K. Thornton. La résurrection des Jaga. Dans le numéro 43 des Cahiers, J. C. Miller défendait l'hypothèse que les «envahisseurs jaga» qui attaquèrent le royaume de Kongo à la fin du xvie siècle n'étaient pas un peuple étranger mais bien des rebelles bakongo, plus ou moins soutenus par les ethnies voisines. J. K. Thornton maintient, en sens inverse, qu'une analyse serrée des sources et une étude géographique du terrain n'excluent nullement l'hyp…
A Note on the Archives of the Propaganda Fide and Capuchin Archives
The formation of the Holy Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in 1622 as a part of the Papacy's attempt to centralize control over overseas missions in Roman hands led to the formation of one of the most important archival deposits in Europe for documentation pertaining to Africa in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Archivio “De Propaganda Fide” in Rome. This Roman-directed missionary organization sent its priests to every c…
New Light on Cavazzi's Seventeenth-Century Description of Kongo
The very full description of west central Africa given in Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi da Montecuccolo's book, Istorica Descrizione de’ tre regni Congo, Matamba ed Angola , first published in 1687, has long been one of the most important sources for the reconstruction of the social, political, economic, and religious history of these three Central African states in the seventeenth century. This is true even though it has long been known that Cavazzi …
Early Kongo-Portuguese Relations
One of the most durable myths of the history of central Africa is that of the early subversion and domination of the kingdom of Kongo by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. Its original statement was made by James Duffy in 1959 and was amplified by Basil Davidson two years later. According to this argument the Portuguese had found a well-developed kingdom of Kongo when they reached the mouth of the Zaire River in 1483, and had entered into a…
The Kingdom of Kongo, ca. 1390-1678. The Development of an African Social Formation
J. K. Thornton — Le royaume du Kongo, ca. 1390-1678. Développement d'une formation sociale africaine. L'abondance et l'ancienneté de la documentation concernant le Kongo permettent d'analyser son évolution par les méthodes du matérialisme historique. Le royaume apparaît alors comme une formation sociale combinant deux modes de production : un mode esclavagiste centré sur la capitale, et un mode villageois dans les zones rurales. La période 1390-1…
Books/Livres
Pre-Colonial Central African History
The Kingdom of Kongo
The Kingdom of Kongo
The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1491–1750
Scholarly opinion on the conversion of the Kingdom of Kongo to Christianity has generally been that it was superficial, diplomatically oriented, impure, dangerous to national sovereignty or rejected by the mass of the population. This article argues that although Christianity in Kongo took a distinctly African form it was widely accepted both in Kongo and in Europe as being the religion of the country. This was possible because Kongo, as a volunt…
The Kingdom of Kongo
The Kingdom of Kongo
The Quest for an African Eldorado
Traditions, Documents, and the Ife-Benin Relationship
Historians of Nigeria have been curious for many years about the relationship between the various states of the southern zone since the sixteenth century. The fact that the area has produced a rich art, has a fairly elaborate set of traditional histories, and has been the subject of some systematic archeological work means that the modern scholar has somewhat more to go on in reconstructing the region's history than just the fairly sparse and dis…
African Fiscal Systems as Sources for Demographic History
In evaluating statistical information found in reports of European travellers, historians have not paid sufficient attention to the possibility that African states possessed reasonably competent fiscal systems. This is demonstrated by a study of the demographic information about the central highlands of Angola collected in the 1850s by the Hungarian traveller Lázló Magyar, who probably used oral fiscal records about the numbers of villages in the…
On the Trail of Voodoo
Scholars have long taken interest in the conversion of African slaves to Christianity in the New World which have mixed, to one degree or another, African religious forms with Christianity. The process has been studied in greatest depth by sociologists, such as Roger Bastide, anthropologists like Melville Herskovitts or art historians such as Robert Farris Thompson. Although the most devoted of the scholars concerned with this have not been histo…
The Art of War in Angola, 1575-1680
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
East of Mina
The Historian and the Precolonial African Economy
Precolonial African Industry and the Atlantic Trade, 1500-1800
Way of Death
African Dimensions of the Stono Rebellion
African Dimensions of the Stono Rebellion
Journal Article African Dimensions of the Stono Rebellion Get access John K. Thornton John K. Thornton Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 96, Issue 4, October 1991, Pages 1101–1113, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/96.4.1101 Published: 01 October 1991
Legitimacy and Political Power
Queen Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba has recently been viewed as a usurper of the throne, largely because some contemporary documents describe her as such. But the issue of legitimacy to rule in Ndongo was a complex one, based not on a fixed constitution but a set of contradictory historical precedents which were cited to establish authority. Njinga managed to find such precedents to support her claims, which were further reinforced by her control …
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