The History of the Eastern Lunda Royal Capitals to 1900

While a series of scholarly monographs have examined the political history of the main polities of the eastern savanna of Central Africa in the two or three centuries which predated the European conquest, most of these studies have failed to sketch even the rough outlines of the urban landscapes of the regions concerned. The first part of this chapter, based mainly on a methodical sifting of Portuguese records, examines the organisation and attributes of the capitals of Mwata Kazembe III Lukwesa Ilunga (1760/70-1804/5) and his successor Chibangu Keleka (1804/5-c. 1850). In the second and third parts of this essay, I seek to transcend the essentially synchronic focus of the previous section, employing a more extensive - if less detailed - range of sources to map the transformations which the royal capitals of the eastern Lunda underwent as a result of the internal and external crisis precipitated by the accession of the usurper Muonga Sunkutu, Mwata Kazembe VII, in 1862.