19th Century Lozi Kingdom of Africa

By the 19th century the Lozi Kingdom of Africa grew to dominate the savanna woodland region of the upper Zambezi River valley in what is now western Zambia. Lozi was a complex, centralized state. Its king delegated regional authority to aristocratic bureaucrats, who directed the seasonal cultivation of the Zambezi floodplains. In 1840 Lozi was overrun by Kololo raiders from what is now South Africa, but in the 1860s the Lozi dynasty and aristocracy were restored. In the second half of the 19th century, ivory hunting and cattle raiding accompanied an expanding Lozi state within the Lozi kingdom of Africa.