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The African Adoption of the Portuguese Crusade during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
- Source :
- The Historical Journal. 65:571-590
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2021.
-
Abstract
- The Portuguese engagement with the continent of Africa following the conquest of Ceuta in 1415 was framed, among numerous conditions, as a crusade (Portuguese: cruzada). However, crusading influences on Portuguese expansion are often sidelined in favour of economic motives. Unlike North and north-east Africa's connected histories with the Crusades (1095–1291) and the continual role of crusading in the following centuries, the fifteenth century offered a new arena. Kongo's adoption of Christianity in the late fifteenth century was the first time that an African power can be viewed as engaging in crusading ideology as a Latin Christian power. Significantly, Kongo was converted by Portuguese missionaries who were undertaking their own crusade. Yet, the crusading influence on Kongo's early development of its Christianity has hitherto been overlooked in Africanist scholarship. Similarly, the situation in Kongo remains a lacuna in Crusades scholarship too. This article calls for a closer discussion between the histories of Africa and the Crusades through the case of Kongo and comparative African examples, such as Benin and Ndongo, to highlight the need to better connect these histories.
- Subjects :
- History
060101 anthropology
Fifteenth
media_common.quotation_subject
05 social sciences
0507 social and economic geography
06 humanities and the arts
Ancient history
Christianity
050701 cultural studies
language.human_language
CONQUEST
Power (social and political)
Scholarship
medicine.anatomical_structure
language
medicine
0601 history and archaeology
Ideology
Portuguese
media_common
Lacuna
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 14695103 and 0018246X
- Volume :
- 65
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- The Historical Journal
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....2a30ce303446f53b0612cdc0f81ad7bb