Ancient state structures in Africa included Empires, which carried with them all the complexity, inequalities, and political baggage inherent in such systems.
Mr. Issac Samuel Nice article and I do love your sources using Hunwick and Michael Gomez who I know personally as an expert on these issues. However, Thornton I have found some inconsistency on his work on the Kongo empire and Angola and West Central Africa in general...as I went to Luanda museum and so some of the primary sources and materials seemed to me conflicts with John Thornton's work. Maybe because Angola had just opened up to the West in 2018 and just organized well it's museum and primary sources.
I think thornton’s primary sources are obtained from Portuguese texts that are often neglected by many Africanists despite their immense value to our knowledge of Atlantic coast in the 16th-17th century . This may be where that conflict , between the available material in Luanda and the texts in Lisbon, is coming from
Mr. Issac Samuel Nice article and I do love your sources using Hunwick and Michael Gomez who I know personally as an expert on these issues. However, Thornton I have found some inconsistency on his work on the Kongo empire and Angola and West Central Africa in general...as I went to Luanda museum and so some of the primary sources and materials seemed to me conflicts with John Thornton's work. Maybe because Angola had just opened up to the West in 2018 and just organized well it's museum and primary sources.
I think thornton’s primary sources are obtained from Portuguese texts that are often neglected by many Africanists despite their immense value to our knowledge of Atlantic coast in the 16th-17th century . This may be where that conflict , between the available material in Luanda and the texts in Lisbon, is coming from