page_title: Kazembe
section_title: Portuguese expeditions
hierarchical_section_title: Kazembe / Pre-colonial history / Portuguese expeditions
caption_attribution_description: The Kazembe Kingdom (light area, and capital shown as red dot) in its prime in the first half of the 19th Century, before Msiri took south-east Katanga. Boundaries of territories and principal trade routes shown are approximate. See the article on Msiri for the same area in 1880.
context_page_description: Kazembe is a traditional kingdom in modern-day Zambia,
  Southeastern Congo.
  For more than 250 years, Kazembe has been an influential kingdom or chieftainship of the Kiluba-Chibemba, speaking the Swahili language or the language of the Eastern Luba-Lunda people of south-central Africa. Its position on trade routes in a well-watered, relatively fertile and well-populated area of forestry, fishery and agricultural resources drew expeditions by traders and explorers who called it variously Kasembe, Cazembe and Casembe.
  Known by the title Mwata or Mulopwe, now equivalent to 'Paramount Chief', the chieftainship with its annual Mutomboko festival stands out in the Luapula Valley and Lake Mweru in present-day Zambia, though its history in colonial times is an example of how Europeans divided traditional kingdoms and tribes without regard to the consequences.
context_section_description: In addition to trading with the interior, the Portuguese hoped to establish a route through it connecting their territories of Angola in the west and Mozambique in the east.
  The expeditions were:
  1796 Manuel Caetano Pereira, a merchant.
  1798 Francisco José de Lacerda e Almeida who came via Tete and died within a few weeks of arriving at Kazembe's, still waiting for trade negotiations to start. He left a valuable journal which was carried back to Tete by his chaplain, Father Pinto, and which was later translated into English by the explorer Sir Richard Burton.
  1802 Pedro João Baptista and Amaro José, pombeiros (slave traders).
  1831 Major José Monteiro and António Gamito, with 20 soldiers and 120 slaves as porters, sent from Sena by the Portuguese governor of that district. Gamito also wrote a journal and said, "We certainly never expected to find so much ceremonial, pomp, and ostentation in the potentate of a region so remote from the sea coast."
  As trade missions, though, they were all failures. Mwata Kazembe III Lukwesa Ilunga and IV Kanyembo Keleka Mayi rebuffed Portuguese attempts to set up the alliance which would control the Atlantic-Indian Ocean trade route from beginning to end. (The Sultan of Zanzibar and Msiri later took control of that route, with Msiri rather than Kazembe as the linchpin.)
caption: The Kazembe kingdom in its prime in the first half of the 19th Century.
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