Queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba: Resisting Portuguese Angola

Queen Nzinga (c. 1583-1663), also spelled Njinga and known in Portuguese as Ginga, ruled the Mbundu kingdoms of Ndongo and Matamba in present-day Angola from 1624 until her death in 1663. For almost four decades she resisted Portuguese efforts to conquer her lands, using diplomacy, alliances, warfare and religion. She is remembered in Angola as a heroine of resistance, though historians also stress her active role in the Atlantic slave trade.

Background

Ndongo was a kingdom of the Mbundu people between the Kwanza and Dande rivers, inland from the Atlantic coast. Its ruler bore the title ngola, from which the Portuguese took the name Angola. In 1576 Portugal founded Luanda on the coast, and from 1579 Portuguese governors waged war on Ndongo, seeking captives for the slave trade and rumoured silver mines.

By the 1610s the Portuguese had built forts deep in Ndongo’s territory. Governor Luís Mendes de Vasconcelos (1617-1621) allied with the Imbangala, mobile bands of warriors who lived by raiding, and in 1618 his forces sacked Ndongo’s capital, Kabasa. Thousands of people were captured and shipped from Luanda, many of them to Brazil and Spanish America.

Nzinga was born around 1583, a daughter of the reigning ngola of Ndongo, whose name is given differently in the sources. She grew up at court and was trained in the political and military skills of the ruling class. In 1617 her brother, Ngola Mbande, became king.

Diplomacy and the struggle for the throne

The embassy to Luanda

In 1621 or 1622 Ngola Mbande sent Nzinga to Luanda to negotiate peace with the new governor, João Correia de Sousa. She argued that Ndongo was a sovereign kingdom, not a conquered vassal, and asked for the removal of the Portuguese fort at Ambaca and the return of Ndongo subjects held by the Portuguese and Imbangala.

During her stay she was baptised as Dona Anna de Sousa, taking the governor’s surname, a move that strengthened her standing with the Portuguese. The governor agreed to a treaty, but the Portuguese did not keep its key promises, and relations soon broke down again.

The most famous story of the embassy, told decades later by the Capuchin missionary Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi, says that the governor offered her no chair, so she had an attendant kneel and sat on her back to negotiate as an equal. Whether or not every detail is true, the story captures her insistence on royal dignity.

Taking power

Ngola Mbande died in 1624, possibly poisoned; some contemporaries suspected Nzinga. She assumed power, at first as regent for her brother’s young son, who was living with an Imbangala leader. The boy was killed, and Nzinga ruled in her own right, an unusual position for a woman in Mbundu politics.

The Portuguese refused to recognise her. Governor Fernão de Sousa backed rival claimants from another branch of the royal family. From 1626 the Portuguese installed their own kings of Ndongo, the longest-serving of whom was Ngola Hari. The Portuguese attacked Nzinga’s base on the Kindonga islands in the Kwanza River, and in 1626-1629 she was forced to retreat eastwards, losing much of her following.

Matamba and the Imbangala alliance

To survive, Nzinga turned to the Imbangala. She allied with the warlord Kasanje and adopted Imbangala laws and rituals, which gave her access to their fearsome warriors and a new basis of authority. Around 1631 she conquered the neighbouring kingdom of Matamba, to the north-east, and made it her new power base.

Matamba lay on important trade routes linking the interior to the coast. Nzinga used its position to control the flow of captives towards the Portuguese and to raid neighbouring territories, including lands held by Portugal’s allies. By the late 1630s she was a regional power that the Portuguese could not ignore.

The Dutch alliance (1641-1648)

In August 1641 the Dutch West India Company captured Luanda. Nzinga saw an opportunity to drive the Portuguese out of Angola altogether and allied with the Dutch, who were eager for captives to supply their colonies in Brazil and the Caribbean.

The alliance brought victories. In 1647 Dutch and Matamba forces defeated a Portuguese army at the Battle of Kombi. The Portuguese, however, held their inland forts such as Massangano. During the fighting Nzinga’s sisters, Kambu and Funji, who were held captive by the Portuguese, were found to be passing information to her. Funji was killed in reprisal, according to the sources by drowning in the Kwanza.

In August 1648 a fleet from Brazil under Salvador Correia de Sá recaptured Luanda, and the Dutch withdrew. Nzinga lost her most powerful ally and retreated again to Matamba.

Peace with Portugal (1656)

After years of further fighting, Nzinga negotiated a peace treaty with Portugal in 1656. The Portuguese released her sister Kambu in return for a ransom, and the treaty fixed the border between Matamba and Portuguese Angola along the Lucala River. Nzinga agreed to open trade, including the trade in captives, through Portuguese markets.

In these final years Nzinga returned to Christianity. She welcomed Capuchin missionaries, among them Cavazzi and Antonio da Gaeta, built churches, and sought to have her kingdom recognised by the Pope. She also tried to ensure a peaceful succession by preparing her sister Kambu, baptised Barbara, to rule after her.

Nzinga died on 17 December 1663, aged about 80. Matamba remained independent of Portugal; it continued as a kingdom under her successors into the nineteenth century.

Ruling as a woman

Nzinga’s position as a female ruler was contested from the start. Mbundu tradition expected the ngola to be a man, and her rivals, both African and Portuguese, used her sex to question her right to rule. She responded by drawing on several sources of legitimacy at once: her royal descent, her Christian baptism, her Imbangala alliances and her success in war.

According to Cavazzi and other missionary writers, she at times took male titles and dress, insisted on being addressed as king, and kept a group of male consorts who dressed as women, while women of her court served as guards. Historians such as John Thornton read these accounts as evidence of how she manipulated gender roles to assert royal authority, while noting that they come from outsiders with their own assumptions.

She also led armies in person well into old age. Contemporary Portuguese and Dutch sources describe her as present on campaign, and her ability to rebuild her forces after repeated defeats was one reason her enemies took her seriously.

Meanwhile, the rump of Ndongo under Portuguese-backed kings did not long outlive her. In 1671 the Portuguese captured the fortress of Pungo a Ndongo and annexed what remained of the kingdom, while Matamba, which Nzinga had made her own, survived as an independent state.

Key people

Nzinga Mbande was the central figure, ruling for nearly 40 years through repeated defeats and recoveries.

Ngola Mbande, her brother, was king of Ndongo from 1617 to 1624 and sent her on the embassy to Luanda.

João Correia de Sousa was governor of Angola at the time of the 1622 embassy and gave Nzinga his surname at her baptism.

Ngola Hari was the rival king installed by the Portuguese, who ruled a reduced Ndongo as their vassal.

Kambu (Barbara) was Nzinga’s sister, captive of the Portuguese for years and later her successor.

Myths and facts

In the eighteenth century European writers turned Nzinga into a lurid literary figure. Works such as Jean-Louis Castilhon’s 1769 novel about her portrayed her as a bloodthirsty queen with a harem of men, drawing loosely on missionary accounts. These portraits say more about European fantasies of Africa than about the historical ruler.

In the modern era she is sometimes presented as an opponent of slavery. Historians stress that she fought to defend her sovereignty and control of trade, and that she sold captives to the Portuguese and Dutch like other rulers of her time. Her resistance was real, but it was not a campaign against the Atlantic slave trade.

Legacy

Nzinga left an unusually rich written record for an African ruler of the period, including letters she dictated to Portuguese governors and the accounts of missionaries who knew her. Historians such as Linda Heywood and John Thornton have used these to show her as a skilled politician who shaped the history of West Central Africa.

In independent Angola she is a national symbol. Her statue stands in Luanda, and she appears in films, school textbooks and popular culture as a model of courage and leadership. Her story is also widely told in the African diaspora and in discussions of women’s leadership in history.

Timeline

• c. 1583: Nzinga is born in Ndongo.
• 1617: Her brother Ngola Mbande becomes king.
• 1621-1622: Nzinga leads an embassy to Luanda and is baptised Dona Anna de Sousa.
• 1624: Ngola Mbande dies and Nzinga takes power.
• 1626: The Portuguese install a rival king and drive Nzinga from the Kindonga islands.
• c. 1631: Nzinga conquers Matamba.
• 1641, August: The Dutch take Luanda; Nzinga allies with them.
• 1647: Victory over the Portuguese at Kombi.
• 1648, August: The Portuguese retake Luanda.
• 1656: Peace treaty between Nzinga and Portugal.
• 1663, 17 December: Nzinga dies in Matamba.

Why it matters

Queen Nzinga’s long reign shows how African rulers responded to European colonial expansion with a mix of resistance, diplomacy and participation in the slave trade. She preserved an independent state when much of Ndongo fell to Portugal, and her life links the histories of Angola, the Kingdom of Kongo, Brazil and the Dutch Atlantic empire.