Did European Christian missions to Africa start before or after the first European sighting of America? Christopher Columbus landed in America in 1492, but it turns out that, just over one year earlier than that, on this day 519 years ago, Portuguese missionaries baptised Nzinga a Nkuwu, the ruler of the Kingdom of Kongo, a territory of some 100,000 square kilometres in Western Central Africa, covering much of the present-day Republic of Congo, northern Angola, and western Democratic Republic of Congo.
By the end of the 15th Century, the Kingdom of Kongo was an advanced state with an extensive trading network, manufacturing copperware, ferrous metal goods, pottery and raffia cloth. Mbanza-Kongo, the capital, was a substantial city, providing a concentration of resources and soldiers, and as a result the king was very powerful. The army consisted of archers and infantrymen who used swords and shields.
The Portuguese first arrived in the Kingdom of Kongo in 1483. King Nzinga a Nkuwu and some of his officials converted to Christianity in the ensuing years, and after his death his son Afonso Mvemba a Nzinga established Christianity as the state religion of his kingdom. A cathedral was built in Mbanza-Kongo in the middle of the 16th Century. The version of Christianity practised in the Kingdom was a syncretised mixture of catholicism and animism.