John K. Thornton's A History of West Central Africa to 1850 is a difficult but occasionally intriguing read. As an update of sorts to Vansina's dated Kingdoms of the Savanna, a work we have mostly read several years ago, much of Thornton's regional history was novel or at least a good refresher. Nonetheless, the same problems persist: absence of written sources, problematic traditions collected in the colonial era in a highly politicized context, and a focus on elites or noble lineages. The absence of written sources for much of Central Africa in the precolonial era and the lack of adequate archaeological research across the region means that much of our knowledge of various polities is stuck in a speculative stage. Hints and glimpses begin with the Portuguese arrival in West Central Africa in the 15th century, but detailed accounts only emerge much later. Even for Kongo, a kingdom whose local elites embraced to at least some extent Portuguese literacy, the surviving sources are usually from and by Europeans. But due to the Portuguese contact and trade with Kongo, Ndongo and Matamba, further inland polities became gradually known. This vast interior, including the area of the Lunda empire which became a major power by the 18th century, included a very important belt of textile production, widely traded and used as currencies in Angola. Much of the problematic oral traditions are contradictory, however, especially when one can compare documented traditions recorded at different moments in the past with later traditions. For instance, this becomes clear with the expansion of Lunda, as others, including some of Imbangala origin, began to claim connections with Lunda in their founding traditions. Lastly, the oral traditions are, unsurprisingly, mostly centered on royal genealogies and barely shed light on free peasants or slaves, groups who must have comprised the majority of the population. This is useful for historians, particularly when kings remembered in tradition can be identified in Portuguese or European sources, and can help establish a chronology. Thornton's study of the region often does this to aid in constructing a timeline for various polities in the region from c.1500 to 1850.
Despite our aforementioned problems with the study of the region, Thornton's study raises a number of questions on the nature of slavery, the slave trade, and cultural exchange within West Central Africa. The slave trade, which essentially financed Portuguese Angola's existence, was often fed by captives raided and captured by the Portuguese, Luso-Africans, and African soba allies. Yet demographics suggested by censuses suggest the colony may have been similar to other polities in the region: men were sold abroad, but women retained. The large-scale forced relocation of people to concentrate wealth by elites was another commonality that allowed kings (and Luso-Africans and Portuguese Angola) to expand their power and revenue bases. The gender imbalance in the population and the central role played by slaves as sources of production (in plantations and estates) and export commodities demonstrates how the slave trade in West Central Africa both adapted and changed the region's various polities. The other ongoing issue in many polities, of centralization versus federation-styled governments played out along this dynamic, as control of people and dependents, including slaves and forcibly relocated farmers, could lead to some rulers succeeding in centralizing their administrations. In other kingdoms, however, political fragmentation followed centralization, as the cases of Kongo, Soyo and even Loango illustrate. This could have tragic consequences when many of the victims of the various civil wars in fragmented states were shipped to the Americas. Indeed, the so-called Jaga and Imbangala bands who ravaged parts of the region appear to have perfectly exploited the sociopolitical conditions of West Central Africa as militarized societies practicing infanticide, ritual cannibalism, and widespread depredations. While some, like Kasanje, eventually formed a permanent state, the militarized bands capable of spreading terror, seizing captives, and selling them to the Portuguese, with whom they occasionally formed alliances with against other African societies, suggest insecurity was rampant. When one also considers the prevalence of burdensome taxation collected by officials in centralized states, the lot of the commoners in much of the area must have been perilous. Even in areas where descendants of relocated populations had at least some guarantee of not being sold abroad, illegal enslavement and sale of people occurred in Portuguese Angola, too.
The most interesting aspect of the book is the question of trade and influences between the Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts. Lunda, whose rise is based partly on trans-African contacts between the coast due to Portuguese interests in both Mozambique and Angola, occupies a major role in this theme. Trade in textiles, copper, European and Indian commodities and slaves must have factors of consideration for Lunda and other African polities in the center of Central Africa. The inability of Portuguese attempts to reach Ethiopia via Kongo in the past due to a misunderstanding by the Portuguese on the extent of Central Africa did not deter their interests in trade with Lunda from both coasts. How exactly, and to what extent, polities like Lunda, its Kazembe, and other polities in the region interacted with the Indian Ocean coast is another question which deserves further exploration. In fact, particularly for the East African connections of West Central Africa before the rise of Lunda.