1.9 West Central Africa: The Kingdom of Kongo

Nzinga Mbemba’S Letter to King João III: S.P.Y. MEthod

LO 1.9.B Explain how the Kingdom of Kongo’s political relations with Portugal affected the kingdom’s participation in the transatlantic slave trade.

Objective: Students will use the S.P. Y. method to analyze Nzinga Mbemba’s letter to the King of Portugal in order to describe the impact of Kongo’s political and economic relationship with Portugal in the 16th century.

Notes

I developed the S.P. Y. method years ago while grading DBQs for the College Board (read more about this here).

Research proves that immediate feedback leads to student growth. That is why I often have students attempt to grade student sample S.P.Y.s right after they grade their own. Nzinga Mbemba’s Letter to King João III in 1526 is a required source. I created the following prompt:

“Evaluate the extent to which Kongo’s political relationship with Portugal changed during the period 1491 to 1550 CE.” This language is taken directly out of the course CED for learning objective 1.9 B and mimics the language and targetted skills of previous AP DBQ prompts.

After I introduce Kongo’s relationship with Portuguese traders, I will hand out the required source and S.P. Y. prompt to the students. I have them read silently, then discuss with a partner, and then individually attempt a S.P. Y.

After giving them about 5-7 minutes to write, I will give students the next handout with the student sample S.P. Y. Students will then grade the student samples and attempt to determine if the examples hit all three of the target skills for writing about documents.

Next, I will display the color-coded version of the answer key on the board and explain why example #2 is better. (This explanation is also on the answer key).

The Slides:

If you are short on time and want to focus only on the required source and S.P. Y. practice, you only need to use slides #13-18 which briefly set up the story and contain the answer key to the student sample S.P. Y. attempts.

However, I included all 19 slides because the story's context is fascinating and helps students better understand why major events of African history unfolded as they did. Kongo’s interactions with Portugal had similarities with the Wolof’s interaction, but there were major differences as well (namely, the Wolof were already connected to larger global trade networks pre-Western European contact). Students might wonder, of all the civilizations along the giant west coast of Africa, many of whom are not in the curriculum, why is Kongo and their conversion to Christianity a focus of an entire course topic? What stands out about Kongo that made it central to the story of African American Studies? Global history, trade routes, and geography shed significant light on this question.

Slide 19 is a bonus and a great way to end the class after document analysis and detailed writing rubric explanation. Harmonia Rosales’ art is fascinating and students should already be familiar with it because Oya’s Betrayal is a required source for Topic 1.7. Closing this lesson with modern art is a good way for us to stay grounded in APAFAM’s interdisciplinary approach.