Njinga

Queen of Angola (r. 1624-1663)

• Born: 1582
• Birthplace: Ndongo (now in Angola)
• Died: December 17, 1663
• Place of death: Matamba (now in Angola)

Through military force, diplomatic cunning, and political manipulation, Njinga successfully resisted Portuguese occupation of central Angola for more than four decades. The first woman ruler of the Mbundu people, she was queen of Ngongo and Mbanda, historic states of modern Angola, and she has become a symbol of indigenous resistance to colonial and foreign control of Angola’s extensive natural resources.

Early Life

Njinga (n-JIHN-guh) grew up in the royal household of the Mbundu people in what today is northern Angola. (“Njinga” is the current official spelling, in accord with the post-1980 orthographic reform of the Kimbundu language by the Angolan government, of the name previously spelled “Nzinga.”) The Mbundu lands stretched from the Atlantic coast in the west to the Kwango River in the eastern highlands and from the Dande River in the north to the Kwanza River in the south. The western part of the region, where Njinga was born, was the kingdom of Ndongo; an eastern section, Mbamba, had been an early homeland of the Mbundu. Njinga’s father was Ngola Kiluanji, ngola being the word for “king” in Kimbundu, the Mbundus’ native language. Ngola Kiluanji ruled the kingdom of Ndongo. Njinga’s mother, however, was descended from slaves and therefore had no blood ties to the hierarchy of landed chieftains. When Ngola Kiluanji died in 1617, one of his sons succeeded him as Ngola Mbandi. Mbandi had murdered any males who might compete with him for the succession, including a son of Princess Njinga.

Several years before Njinga’s birth, the Portuguese began settling south of the Congo River, first occupying the island of Luanda, off the coast of Ndongo territory, then moving up the fertile Kwanza River Valley, seeking gold and slaves. Slaves were in particular demand to supply labor for Portugal’s wealthy sugar plantations in Brazil. The Portuguese established Luanda as a slave post. They traded for captives with the Ngolo king and any local chieftains. Penetrating Mbundu territory with troops and missionaries, they named the region Angola, because its people and territory were viewed as the domain of the ngola.

Life’s Work

As the Portuguese advanced into the heart of Ndongo territory, they threatened the royal capital, as well as the Ndongo monopoly on trade and slaving routes across the region. To thwart or manipulate this advance, Njinga arrived in Luanda in 1621, presenting herself to the Portuguese governor as an emissary of her half brother, Ngola Mbandi.

Njinga had seen herself as a rival to succeed Mbandi to the throne, believing she could better exercise power and determine and protect Ndongo’s interests. Mbundu tradition, however, prohibited women from ruling the kingdom. To help convince the Portuguese to support her bid for the throne, Njinga was baptized in 1622 and agreed to allow Portuguese missionaries and slavers to enter Ndongo. Taking the Christian name Ana, she assumed the surname of the governor of Luanda, de Sousa. Because Portuguese women bore the title of Dona, Princess Njinga of Ndongo became known as Dona Ana de Sousa. She was not, however, submissive to the Portuguese. At her first interview with the governor, knowing she would not be provided a chair, she had one of her maidservants bend over and sat on her back.

By 1624, Mbandi was dead, mysteriously murdered, and Njinga ruled the kingdom. Officially, she was regent for Mbandi’s young son, her nephew, because, as a woman, she was hesitant directly to announce herself as monarch. The Portuguese did not accept Njinga as queen of Ndongo any more than the traditional nobility of her kingdom did. Portugal eventually supported a candidate to the succession whose aristocratic lineage was more acceptable and who could thereby prove more useful and malleable to their colonial interests. Outraged by what she saw as Portugual’s betrayal, Njinga renounced her Christianity and, formally asserting herself as queen of Ndongo, assembled a resistance force made up of fugitive Portuguese slaves, marginalized members of the Ndongo court, and mercenary warrior bands.

The mercenaries were known as the Imbangala, refugees from drought and from slave raids in central Africa. They had settled along the southern and eastern frontiers of Mbundu territory and sometimes were also identified with Jaga tribesmen. With these forces in her command, Njinga, sometimes styled the Jaga Queen, withdrew up the Kwanza River Valley. Eventually, she and what remained of her followers settled on a high plain in Mbamba territory, resisting and harassing the Portuguese through guerrilla warfare.

From her remote fortified capital, Njinga established her own base for slave trading. During the 1630’s, Njinga, now the ruler of Mbamba, expanded into Portuguese-held Ndongo. Her position was further strengthened in the following decade, when the Dutch occupied Luanda. They supported her resistance to the Portuguese, whom she besieged in the Kwanza Valley, and they were ardent clients for her slave trade, because they needed slaves for their own plantation colonies.

Ever sensitive, however, that being a woman undermined her power, Njinga declared herself to be a man and refused to be addressed as “queen,” only as “king.” She kept as consorts men who were required to dress as women, and she trained her ladies-in-waiting as warriors. She personally led battles and guerrilla raids against the Portuguese.

However, in 1648, the Portuguese expelled the Dutch and reasserted their authority in Angola. Aware of her vulnerability, Njinga attempted to mollify the Portuguese by returning to Christianity. She signed a treaty with them in 1656 that allowed missionaries and representatives of Portuguese trade and government to reside in her capital. She calculated or hoped that having individual Portuguese citizens in her midst, dependent on her for their lives, might be a final strategy to control or repel Portugal’s forces if necessary. Although still vigorous enough in 1658 to once again marry, Njinga died in 1663 at the age of eighty-one.

The exceptional historical record that exists for Njinga is due to documents she left behind and to the missionaries who resided at her court in her final years. They frequently interviewed her and chronicled the events of her reign. At her court, she often dressed in the high fashion of Baroque Europe and employed many seamstresses to outfit her in the latest European style. She used royal jewels, including a semispherical, arched crown similar to that of a European monarch, and spoke and wrote fluent Portuguese.

Significance

Njinga occupies a unique role in early modern Angolan and sub-Saharan African history. For more than four decades in the mid-seventeenth century, she effectively blocked the intrusion into west central Angola of Portuguese colonists, who were attempting to control the region’s slave trade. She sustained this trade herself as an economic and political interest for herself and her supporters and effectively established among the Mbundu the practice of female rulership.

Angolan resistance to Portuguese penetration of the country’s interior withered, however, after Njinga’s death. Although several queens succeeded Njinga, they were all controlled by Portuguese missionaries and governors, who became the primary beneficiaries of the ever-expanding slave trade.

Njinga is often recognized as a heroine of resistance to colonial repression of native African peoples. Nonetheless, although the historical record demonstrates her astuteness and tenacity, it also reveals the extent to which she profited from and was complicit with the colonial institution of slavery. She represents an historical pattern in which marginalized members of an elite challenge established members for rule: To strengthen that challenge, they may ally themselves with outside forces. When opposed, they maintain a persistent resistance. However, over time, they are compromised and absorbed by a power system they wish not so much to eliminate as to placate, profit from, or dominate.

Bibliography

Curto, José C. Enslaving Spirits: The Portuguese-Brazilian Alcohol Trade at Luanda and Its Hinterland, c. 1550-1830. Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2004. Analyzes Portuguese economic interests in southwest Africa and commercial and sociopolitical consequences in Mbundu territory.

Miller, Joseph Calder. Kings and Kinsmen: Early Mbundu States in Angola. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1976. Examines conditions of stability among Mbundu political entities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as territory was wracked by external invasion and internal divisions.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Njinga of Matamba in a New Perspective.” Journal of African History 16, no. 2 (1975): 201-216. Original analysis of the objectives, assumptions, tactics, and effectiveness of Njinga in claiming and occupying the rulership of Ndongo and Mbamba.

Schwarz-Bart, Simone. “Ana de Sousa Nzinga: The Queen Who Resisted the Portuguese Conquest.” In Ancient African Queens. Vol. 1 in In Praise of Black Women. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001. Reviews the life of Njinga as an early Angolan heroine of anticolonialist resistance.

Skidmore-Hess, Cathy. Queen Njinga, 1582-1663: Ritual, Power, and Gender in the Life of a Precolonial African Ruler. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1995. Consolidates and reassesses research of the previous generation of Africanist scholars on Njinga.

Thornton, John K. “Legitimacy and Political Power: Queen Njinga, 1624-1663.” Journal of African History 32, no. 1 (1991): 25-40. Offers a detailed examination of the constitutional and historical claims of Njinga to rule Ngongo as queen.