The Kingdom of Kongo

The kingdom of Kongo possesses one of the best-developed historiographies of any pre-colonial African state, and Hilton’s contribution follows upon a tradition of social anthropological approaches dating back to the 1920s and more recently found  in  work  by  Balandier,  Randles and  Ekholm.  However,  Hilton  is more specifically historical than these earlier writers in that she makes a serious attempt to trace development in the major political, religious and social institutions rather than presenting a timeless or only superficially historical account. She has also made much more systematic use of the huge volume of written contemporary documentation available on the kingdom, especially the unpublished archival and manuscript material. She has thus developed this approach to its fullest within the confines of the available information.