Garcia II of Kongo - Taking The Throne and The Dutch War

Taking The Throne and The Dutch War

On 22 January 1641 Álvaro died in mysterious circumstances, and before the election could be held Garcia moved forces from Mbamba to the capital and forced them to declare him king. He almost immediately faced a crisis, however, for within a few weeks Paulo, the Count of Soyo and longtime ally died and was replaced by his rival and Garcia's enemy Daniel da Silva. At the same time that this happened, the Dutch armada invaded and took the Portuguese colony of Luanda. Kongo had a long term pact to assist the Dutch in driving the Portuguese out of Angola, and he immediately moved his armies south to assist. In 1642 he received an embassy from the Dutch and signed an alliance and agreement, only refusing to permit them to send him a Calvinist preacher, insisting that he was a Catholic and would not permit it.

Garcia hoped that the Dutch would assist him in driving the Portuguese out of Angola, as these terms had been laid down as early as 1622, when Pedro II had proposed the Kongo-Dutch alliance. However, the Dutch were not as willing to press their attack home once they had taken Luanda. Instead, they hoped to make it a trading post and allowed the Portuguese to continue to possess their inland territories. Dutch soldiers, however, helped Garcia defeat a rebellion in the small southern district of Nsala in 1642, the slaves captured from this paying for Dutch expenses in taking Luanda.

In 1643, as the relations between the Dutch West India Company and the Portuguese broke down, Garcia's forces assisted in driving the Portuguese from their positions on the Bengo River, though again the Dutch refused to press the attack home and the Portuguese regrouped at Massangano, further inland. However, increasingly hostile relations between Garcia and Daniel da Silva prevented him from committing forces to the campaign against Portugal.

Thus, in 1645 Garcia sought to drive Daniel from Soyo, but was defeated trying to take the Soyo fortified position at Mfinda Ngula. His son and would be heir, Afonso, leading the Kongo forces was captured, and a campaign to free him in 1646 failed also. Because of these wars, Kongo was only able to send small forces, when the Dutch, fearing that reinforced Portuguese might drive them from Luanda, declared all out war in conjunction with Queen Njinga of Matamba. Although the allies were successful at the Battle of Kombi in 1647, they were unable to dislodge the Portuguese from their forts. Further reinforcements from Brazil in 1648 forced the Dutch to withdraw.