"John K. Thornton’s new book is another must-read. It contains both translations of the extant letters of the most significant king of Kongo’s history, Afonso I (r. 1506–1542), and a powerful, learned, and highly readable analysis of what these letters tell us about the life and times of one of the most important rulers anywhere in the world during the sixteenth century. This book will be essential reading for scholars, teachers, and students engaged with the history of the Kingdom of Kongo." —Toby Green, King’s College London

"John K. Thornton's new book is another must-read. It contains both translations of the extant letters of the most significant king of Kongo's history, Afonso I (r. 1506-1542), and a powerful, learned, and highly readable analysis of what these letters tell us about the life and times of one of the most important rulers anywhere in the world during the sixteenth century. This book will be essential reading for scholars, teachers, and students engaged with the history of the Kingdom of Kongo." --Toby Green, King's College London

Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, the west central African kingdom of Kongo practiced Christianity and actively participated in the Atlantic world as an independent, cosmopolitan realm. Drawing on an expansive and largely unpublished set of objects, images, and documents, Cecile Fromont examines the advent of Kongo Christian visual culture and traces its development across four centuries marked by war, the Atlantic slave trade, and, finally, the rise of nineteenth-century European colonialism. By offering an extensive analysis of the religious, political, and artistic innovations through which the Kongo embraced Christianity, Fromont approaches the country's conversion as a dynamic process that unfolded across centuries. The African kingdom's elite independently and gradually intertwined old and new, local and foreign religious thought, political concepts, and visual forms to mold a novel and constantly evolving Kongo Christian worldview. Fromont sheds light on the cross-cultural exchanges between Africa, Europe, and Latin America that shaped the early modern world, and she outlines the religious, artistic, and social background of the countless men and women displaced by the slave trade from central Africa to all corners of the Atlantic world.

A unique and forward-thinking book that sheds new light on the origins, dynamics, and cosmopolitan culture of the Kongo Kingdom from a cross-disciplinary perspective.

An exploration of how Afro-Mexicans affirmed their culture, subjectivities and colonial condition through festive culture and performance.

The book talks of strongly held beliefs and how these lead to conflicts. This applies to rivaling nations as well as to individuals in competition. These beliefs have been found to be influenced by the environment in which those who hold these beliefs are brought up or in the circumstances in which they find themselves. A bad legacy of beliefs handed over to a new generation or to an individual in a position of authority, may influence them throughout their lifespan, just as colonizers handed over legacies to their colonies; these subjects used the bad practices they inherited from their superiors to subjugate the individuals they in turn supervised. This trickle-down effect has been a negative practice which has led to enormous conflicts in societies, and this in turn has had a conflictual effect on the subjects they have had to control. Examples are taken from our leaders and those they have had under them. It has become a vicious cycle which turns out to be a snare without an end. We find that there is a civilization struggle resulting from this conflict of beliefs. Overall, whether negative or positive, it is for a survival of the fittest.