Msiri (c. 1830 - December 20, 1891) founded and ruled the Yeke Kingdom (also called the Garanganze or Garenganze kingdom) in south-east Katanga, DR Congo from about 1856 to 1891. His name is sometimes spelled 'M'Siri' in articles in French. Other variants are 'Mziri', 'Msidi', and 'Mushidi'; and his full name was Mwenda Msiri Ngelengwa Shitambi....[more]

The colonisation of Africa has a long history, the most famous phase being the European Scramble for Africa of the nineteenth century... [more]

The Scramble for Africa, also known as the Race for Africa, was the proliferation of conflicting European claims to African territory during the New Imperialism period, between the 1880s and the First World War in 1914. The last 20 years of the nineteenth century saw the transition from ‘informal imperialism’ of control through military influence and economic dominance to that of direct rule.[1] Attempts to mediate imperial competition, such as the Berlin Conference (1884 - 1885) between Britain, France and Germany, failed to establish definitively the competing powers' claims...[more]

Maria de Fonseca was the favourite wife of Msiri, the powerful warrior-king of Katanga, at the time when the Stairs Expedition arrived in 1891 to take possession of the territory for the Belgian King Leopold II, with or without Msiri's consent. Msiri typically cemented alliances with trading partners by marriage. Maria was the daughter of mixed Portuguese-African parents from Angola, and brother of Coimbra, the first trader to supply him with gunpowder from the west coast, the key to Msiri's power.

In 1891, Maria was about forty-five years old and Msiri, about sixty, and had been ruler of Katanga for thirty years. When treaty negotiations with Msiri reached stalemate, Christian de Bonchamps, third officer of the expedition, proposed capturing Msiri and holding him hostage. Msiri typically had 300 armed warriors at his stockade, but de Bonchamps had discovered that every night, he would leave with just a handful of guards to visit Maria at her compound nearly a kilometre away.

Captain Stairs rejected the idea of the ambush in favour of an ultimatum, and this led to a confrontation in which Captain Omer Bodson shot Msiri dead, and was himself fatally shot. Maria and Coimbra appear to have come to terms with this development, and took part in talks with Stairs on the acceptance by Msiri's successor of Leopold's sovereignty over Katanga. Coimbra returned to Angola but Maria remained in Katanga as she enjoyed her position at the king's court...[more]