Complex of states that flourished in Central Africa in the 16th–19th centuries.
In the late 15th century a small group of ivory hunters founded a state around which a number of satellites proliferated, spreading by the 17th century into the southern Congo Basin and what are now western Angola, and Zambia. The northeastern portion was inhabited by the Luba; the southwestern portion by the Lunda. These groups traded slaves and ivory to the Portuguese for cloth and other goods. In the 18th century migrants founded Kazembe farther southeast; it flourished until late in the 19th century, when it was colonized by the British.