Not dolls, curses, or shuffling zombies. Vodun is one of the world’s older living religions — a sophisticated West African faith that Hollywood turned into a horror prop.
In the 1640s a Mbundu queen, a Kongolese king, and the Dutch came within a breath of driving Portugal out of West-Central Africa. This is how they nearly won — and how the kingdom that first welcomed the caravel ended in fragments.
Twice — a century and a half apart — Russia reached for a foothold in Africa. Both attempts ended in storm, farce, and a single shelled fort. But they happened.
Angola is named after a royal title — the ngola of Ndongo. This is the story of that kingdom, and of the terrifying mercenary society the slave trade unleashed upon it.
How a sovereign king chose Christianity in 1491 — and how his son became the first African ruler to put the crime of the Atlantic slave trade into writing.
In 1781 the crew of the slave ship Zong threw 132 living people into the Atlantic, then filed an insurance claim. The court case that followed helped expose the brutal logic of the slave trade and became an important episode in Britain’s growing abolitionist movement.
For its first decades, the traffic through Elmina flowed in the direction history has forgotten — Europeans selling African captives to African buyers, in exchange for gold.
In June 1730, ninety-six captives aboard the slave ship Little George broke their irons, seized the vessel, and sailed it back to Africa — with no one aboard who knew how.
Bigo bya Mugenyi, Uganda: a complete guide to East Africa's largest earthworks complex. History, the Chwezi Empire, the debate over what the ditches were really for, and how to visit.
Gondar, Ethiopia: a complete guide to the 17th-century castle city of Fasiladas. History, Emperor Fasilides, the Gondarine architectural style, Debre Berhan Selassie, Timkat at Fasilides' Bath, and the best time to visit.
Thimlich Ohinga, Kenya: a complete guide to the largest dry-stone enclosure complex in the Lake Victoria Basin. History, the Bantu and Luo builders, the three-phase walling technique, UNESCO status, and the best time to visit.
