Nzinga from Ndongo and Matamba

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Queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba

Nzinga von Matamba (* 1583 - December 17, 1663 ) was an African queen who ruled over the kingdom of Ndongo and the neighboring kingdom of Matamba in what is now Angola . Her Christian name was Ana de Sousa . It was best known for being able to successfully resist the Portuguese invaders over a long period of time.

Biographical

Nzinga (Jinga) was born in 1583 as a half-sister of the reigning King Ngoli Bondi (Mbande a ngola), belonged to the people of Jaga and was their disputes with the located on the coast of present-day Angola Lower transmitting Portuguese famous colonists.

As a young princess she was already negotiating the division of political power, but then went into resistance against the Portuguese, which she maintained for two and a half decades. When the Portuguese conquered the capital of Ngola, Luanda , in 1618 , they organized the resistance of the locals against the colonial army . Later she allied herself with the Dutch competitors of Portugal in the slave business. After long and eventful victories and defeats, the army leader , who converted to Christianity in 1621, died in a previously independent kingdom of Matamba in 1663 at the age of 80. Centuries later, Nzinga was still regarded by the African peoples as a symbol of the struggle for freedom and independence, which, of course, could not stop the Portuguese's way into the interior in the long term.

prehistory

Statue in Luanda

Nzinga's path was determined both by the pressure from the Portuguese advancing inland and from some neighbors from the east. The Ndongo Empire did not emerge until the beginning of the 16th century when groups of Kimbundu and some neighboring peoples were absorbed into a new state. The keeper of the ngola-a-kiluanje shrine with the title “Ngola” became king of the new state and resided in Luanda . In the battle with the rival neighboring empire Imbangala , the Ngola empire (Ndongo) gained military strength, but at the same time came into conflict with the Portuguese, who exported large numbers of slaves for their possessions in America (Frager and Olivier name for the beginning of the 17th century the number of 10,000 abducted people per year). Together with a wave of emigration to more conveniently located areas, the loss of population due to the slave trade plunged Ndongo into a crisis, the climax of which was the occupation of Luanda by the Portuguese. The advance of Louis Mendes de Vasconcellos into the heartland of the empire in 1618 resulted in the destruction of the residence and the executions of numerous chiefs. When a severe drought followed with famine, the hour of Princess Nzinga came.

Nzinga's path to power

According to historian Joseph C. Miller, the fact that Nzinga could even get to the top of the state was a sensation. At first she acted as the king's emissary to negotiate peace and trade relations with the Portuguese in Luanda around 1621 (1622). When Ngola Ngoli Bondi (mbande a ngola) died two years later under mysterious circumstances (Nzinga's involvement cannot be clearly proven), Nzinga was the first woman to seize the title of Ngola. According to Miller, she might have won the royal title against the will of major political forces and had little support from her subjects. The traditional hierarchy was organized through a complex system of offices headed by the holder of the ngola title. The nominally unlimited power of the Ngola, however, de facto depended on whether he could win the support of the most influential lineages for himself. Nzinga's rise to power was “revolutionary” for at least three reasons: On the one hand, as close relatives to the Portuguese, as the sister of the last regent, she managed to give herself what she actually was according to the categories of Europeans, more precisely: a half-sister to another Mother. In the matrilineal society of the Mbundu, however, the child of a woman's wife was no relative at all. In addition, Nzinga's mother was a non-linear “ pariah ” of the Mbundu society, and thirdly, the Mbundu had strong reservations about women assuming political office. Women were also expressly forbidden to take the position of ngola.

In addition, her shady role in the demise of her “brother” was an obstacle that she had probably poisoned. According to tradition, anyone who was hostile to the regent was excluded from the succession. The path of the Nzinga to the dignity of a queen was not supported by tradition, but rather, in contrast to tradition, had become through the state crisis and through perfidious exploitation of the political constellation at court.

Nzinga and the Portuguese

The arrival of the Portuguese on the coast and their further penetration into the Ndongo Empire had disastrous consequences for the existing systems of norms and power. In 1622 the Portuguese were so strong that they were able to offer the negotiator Nzinga, after almost 40 unsuccessful years, support in trade and military affairs in an attempt to penetrate Ndongo. The pressure from the neighboring Imbangala had become so strong that the Ngola found the détente with the Portuguese attractive enough to enter into negotiations. Nzinga then converted to Catholicism , which earned her the support of the Portuguese for their political ambitions towards their established competitors. However, the acceptance of the Christian religion also shows how little value it placed on the loyalty of its own people. After taking power, it took a new path and opened the way into the country for the missionaries and slave traders of the Portuguese. The only consideration the Portuguese had to give up was a fort; Nzinga's appointment as queen was therefore in the interests of the colonizers, but it was by no means positive for the lineages, which had been supported by the rulers until then and in which all potential rivals of Nzinga were later eliminated.

Nzinga and the Imbangala

The break with the new masters came with the next governor, who refused to adhere to the military abstinence on Nzinga's territory. In addition, the relationship had deteriorated when Nzinga took in slaves who had escaped from Portuguese plantations. When the Portuguese gave the title of Ngola to someone who was more comfortable with them, Nzinga had to mobilize outside help, as she no longer had any support from the ranks of the traditional ranks. So she took escaped slaves into her service and allied herself with some Imbangala warrior groups. According to Miller, the “queen without relatives” now had the power of a group that did not - unlike their own people - attribute her a low status, but on the contrary valued women as regents and war leaders. Nzinga acquired the Imbangala title of "Tembanza" and was thus initially considered a legitimate ruler. In the Imbangala area she gained a zone of retreat undisturbed by the Portuguese, from where she led her expeditions against Portuguese slave traders. This period of political and military success lasted until 1629, when some warlords of the allied Imbangala defected to the Portuguese and wanted to deny Nzinga the title because of the lack of ethnicity. Nzinga then withdrew further inland and reorganized the fight against the Portuguese.

Nzinga and Matamba

In a geographically favorable lowland in the northeast of the Ndongo Empire, a political vacuum had formed in the course of the conflict, which Nzinga was able to take advantage of. In addition, the Matamba empire resident there had a long tradition of female rule. It was not until the fighting of 1621 that the last queen had been driven away. Nzinga's power grew there even more because the most lucrative slave route of the Portuguese traders went through territory now under their control. They seized the slave trade and kept their opponents away from this profitable business.

A long-range impact of the Thirty Years' War in Europe brought Nzinga one of its greatest triumphs in 1641 - the Dutch had driven the Portuguese from Luanda after a long war and allied themselves with Nzinga. They became the best customers in Nzinga's slave business: Miller speaks of 12,000–13,000 delivered slaves per year in the 1640s. With the help of the Dutch it was possible to keep the Portuguese out of the inland and even to regain some areas near the coast. However, Nzinga's influence declined again around 1648 when the Dutch withdrew from Luanda and Angola.

Return to the Portuguese

Nzinga's questionable ancestry always kept her dependent on strangers or outsiders of her traditional society. When the support of the Dutch fell away, Nzinga's tactics changed decisively after almost 25 years of war against the Portuguese. The restoration of Portuguese power in the country led them to peace negotiations, as a result of which they had to open their Matamba empire to the occupiers, pay tribute and share the slave trade with Portuguese traders. In return, she was granted the support of the slave traders and extensive autonomy . In the constant diplomatic balancing act that lasted until her death, she benefited from the now again emphasized Christian denomination, which she, the "Queen without relatives", made allies among the powerful European fellow believers from mission, slave trade and military leadership.

Conclusion

English title of the trilingual UNESCO publication on Queen Nzinga

Nzinga's forty-year career is astonishing, not only because of her unfavorable starting position as regent without any formal requirements, but also because of her diplomatic and military skills in an era in which even legitimate rulers would have struggled to maintain power. In a dynamically shifting political environment, she succeeded in assessing the political situation inside and outside of her sphere of influence and using it in her favor.

According to Miller, Nzinga is not to be seen as the freedom fighter against the European invaders as drawn by Lee Kossodo. Rather, she was interested in her own advantage, she had no qualms about subordinating “African” interests to her advantage. It was precisely from the control of the slave trade that it benefited for decades, and with regard to its pacts with constantly changing allies, it could well be called an “African sister of Machiavelli ”. There was no clear front position assumed by Kossodo for the invading Europeans against the Africans to be subjugated, so there was no "patriotic resistance" either. Nevertheless, Nzinga's innovative way of exercising power could have served as a model for other African rulers to defy the (militarily) technically superior Europeans.

What was easy for her, the illegitimate queen, to keep changing alliances, could not be imitated by other, more established rulers. Nzinga had made her personal hardship a virtue and, in retrospect, had practiced an impressive policy because it was flexible. But their individual case could only delay the march through the Portuguese and thus the path to colonial dependence. Nzinga was the first ruler to leave tradition - a tradition that has not been revived to this day.

Controversy

In 2017, a jury's proposal to rename a street in the African Quarter (Berlin) to Nzinga sparked controversy . This was criticized for her unscrupulous political style and her active role as a slave trader and withdrawn again.

literature

  • Blandena Lee Kossodo: The Woman in Africa , Munich 1978
  • Joseph C. Miller: Nzinga of Matamba and the Problem of State Formation among Strong Descend Groups , Addis Abeba 1973.
  • Joseph C. Miller: Njinga of Matamba in a New Perspective . Journal of African History, 16/2, 1975, pp. 201-16 ( JSTOR 180812 )
  • John K. Thornton: Legitimacy and Political Power: Queen Njinga, 1624–1663 . The Journal of African History, 1991, Volume 32, No. 1, pp. 25-40 ( JSTOR 182577 )
  • Hettie V. Williams: Queen Nzinga (Njinga Mbande) . In: Leslie M. Alexander, Walter C. Rucker: Encyclopedia of African American History . ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara (California), 210, ISBN 978-1-85109-774-6 , pp. 82-84

Movie

The Portuguese director Sérgio Graciano filmed the life of the queen under the title Njinga, Rainha de Angola in 2013. The Angolan production was then also released on DVD.

Web links

Commons : Nzinga  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Matamba in the Encyclopædia Britannica (Engl.)
  2. ↑ a b After criticism: Jury for African Quarter should meet again. Retrieved July 24, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Nzinga by Ndongo and Matamba in the Internet Movie Database (English)
personal data
SURNAME Nzinga from Ndongo and Matamba
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sousa, Ana de (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Angolan Queen of Matamba and Ndongo
DATE OF BIRTH 1583
DATE OF DEATH December 17, 1663