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The kingdom of the Kongo's early campaigns of expansion brought new populations under the kingdom's control and produced many war captives.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":4">Thornton, John K. “The Kingdom of Kongo, ca. 1390-1678. The Development of an African Social Formation (Le Royaume Du Kongo, ca. 1390-1678. Développement d’une Formation Sociale Africaine).” ''Cahiers d’Études Africaines'' 22, no. 87/88 (1982): 325–42. <nowiki>http://www.jstor.org/stable/4391812</nowiki>.</ref> Starting in the 14th century (and reaching its height in the 17th century), the kings of the Kongo forcibly relocated captured peoples to the royal capital at [[M'banza-Kongo|Mbanza Kongo]]. The resulting high concentration of population around Mbanza Kongo and its outskirts played a critical role in the centralization of Kongo. The capital was a densely settled area in an otherwise sparsely populated region where rural [[population density|population densities]] probably did not exceed 5 persons per km<sup>2</sup>. Early Portuguese travelers described Mbanza Kongo as a large city, the size of the Portuguese town of [[Évora]] as it was in 1491. By the end of the sixteenth century, Kongo's population was probably over half a million people in a core region of some 130,000 square kilometers. By the early seventeenth century the city and its [[hinterland]] had a population of around 100,000, or nearly one out of every six inhabitants in the Kingdom (according to baptismal statistics compiled by a [[Jesuit]] priest in 1623), while the kingdom as a whole numbered some 780,000.<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=Thornton|first=John K.|date=Jul 2021|title=Revising the Population History of the Kingdom of Kongo|journal=The Journal of African History|volume=62|issue=2|pages=201–212 |doi=10.1017/S0021853706001812 |s2cid=145136736}}</ref>
The concentration of population, economic activity, and political power in Mbanza Kongo strengthened the Kongolese monarchy and allowed for a centralized government. Captives taken in war were enslaved and integrated into the local population, producing a food and labor surplus, while rural regions of the kingdom paid taxes in the form of goods the capital could not produce itself. A class of urban nobility developed in the capital, and their demand for positions at court and consumer goods fueled the kingdom's economy. Rural development was intentionally discouraged by the Kongolese king<ref name=":4" />, ensuring the capital remained the economic and political center of the kingdom. This concentration allowed resources, soldiers and surplus foodstuffs to be readily available at the request of the king and made the king overwhelmingly powerful when compared to any potential rival.<ref name=":5" /><ref name=":4" />
By the time of the first recorded contact with the Europeans, the Kingdom of Kongo was sited at the centre of an extensive trading network. Apart from natural resources and [[ivory]], the country manufactured and traded copperware, [[ferrous]] metal goods, [[raffia]] cloth, and [[pottery]]. The Kongo people spoke in the [[Kikongo language]]. The eastern regions, especially that part known as the Seven Kingdoms of [[Kongo dia Nlaza]], were particularly famous for the production of cloth.
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