ASC Seminar: Knowledge = Power. Politics and formal education in the precolonial Kongo kingdom

The African continent is – especially for its precolonial past – often associated with oral traditions. Little is known that a formal school system was introduced in the West-Central African Kongo kingdom in the beginning of the 16th century, some years after Portuguese navigators first established contact with the Kongo royal elite. Especially the Kongo king Afonso I – who ruled from 1509 to 1542 – attempted to use the Christian school system as a means to integrate the districts of the kingdom more fully into a political unity. Please register

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