Queen Njinga notes part 4 PDF

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Queen Njinga notes part 4...

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Queen Njinga notes part 4: ● Njinga promoted the idea that she was a deity b/c of her status as a descendant of Ndongo kings, and most of her followers seemed to believe that she was immortal ● Between 1631 and 1641, Njinga led her forces on one campaign after another in which they conquered lands that had formerly been conquered by the Portuguese ● Njinga decided that her inner circle should regard her as a man, not as a woman. She began this transition by marrying a man, Ngola Ntombo, and insisted that he dress as a woman. She referred to him as a female and made him address her as king. She also increased her number of male concubines and had them dress in the same clothing as the female concubines, and the male and female concubines had to sleep in the same room but could not touch each other ● Njinga’s transformation into an Imbangala leader was largely what propelled her to become the most powerful African leader in the region ● 1633: tribute in slaves had declined and therefore Coutinho couldn’t afford to make war against Njinga, and he was also facing the threat of the Dutch forces. Also, the sobas in the regions near Luanda were mostly intimidated into submission to Njinga. So Ngola Hari had no choice but to face Njinga’s forces without Portuguese backup ● Sometime during 1632-1633, Coutinho freed Njinga’s sister Kambu, but this did not appease Njinga...her forces kept attacking ● While Njinga’s forces were attacking Ndongo, Kasa had attacked Matamba, and she managed to force him to withdraw after he had already captured slaves and livestock and destroyed many villages ● “By 1635, Njinga was firmly in control and was leading her forces in persistent attacks against Ngola Hari and the sobas who lived near Ambaca” (129) ● 1636: the new governor, Francisco de Vasconcelos da Cunha, ordered infantry companies to Ambaca, and these forces were prepared to move against Njinga’s forces if they attacked ● Dutch incursions into Benguela distracted Portuguese attention yet again as the governor had to focus on fortifying Luanda and other coastal regions ● Njinga was still trying to pursue diplomacy even as she fought against Ngola Hari. 1637: she sent a gift to the Jesuit college in Luanda “as an indication of her willingness to begin a diplomatic alliance” (130). They rejected this ● 1639: another governor, Pedro Cesar de Menezes, appeared in Luanda with 300 troops, which made Njinga alter her strategy. He sent her a letter addressing several issues that he wanted to resolve, and she sent back a letter and gifts and said that she had cooperated with Menezes’ command to turn over the slaves claimed by the Portuguese (but these slaves were old and decrepit) ● Menezes met Njinga’s ambassadors with an elaborate military display in the public plaza and had his infantry put on a shooting demonstration, in order to show Njinga his military power

● In her letters, Njinga requested that a high-level Portuguese delegation visit her in her capital at Matamba. Menezes agreed to this and nominated a respected Luanda resident, Gaspar Borges Maureira, and a priest, Father Dionísio Coelho, to visit her. He ordered them to seek peace treaties with her and her ally Kasanje, and to get Njinga and Kasanje’s word that they would favor Christian practices over Imbangala practices. This party arrived in Kasanje’s kilombo in 1639 or 1640 ● Kasanje agreed to the peace treaties on the condition that Njinga renounce her claims to Matamba, but refused to give up his Imbangala culture ● The party then went to Njinga’s court in Matamba. Njinga said that she would not give up her Imbangala practices. She said she would join in an alliance to the Portuguese crown, but expressed that “only through careful judicial processes or war” would they be able to resolve the issue of her being the leader of Ndongo...she was not ready to give that up ● Someone (probably from Njinga’s court) poisoned Borges Madureira, who only survived because one of Ngola Hari’s doctors gave him the antidote ● When other officials heard of this, they vowed to launch a military attack against Njinga, but the Dutch conquest of Luanda in 1641 derailed this plan ● Father Coelho stayed six months longer at Njinga’s court but did not make any progress in getting her to commit to Christian practices. She didn’t allow him to baptize any of her followers b/c she said if she did so, she would lose her status as a true Imbangala ● 133: “Njinga had become an expert at manipulating religious ideology and rituals to maintain power” ● April 1641: a Dutch armada with 2,000 soldiers from the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe, and Native Americans from Brazil, arrived in Luanda and captured the city ● Njinga was very happy about this and she sent ambassadors to the Dutch forces to propose an alliance. But their aims were different: Njinga wanted to expel the Portuguese and regain control of her ancestral lands, whereas the Dutch wanted to have a reliable source of slaves to supply to northeastern Brazil, which they had conquered from the Portuguese in 1630 ● The kingdom of Kongo had formed an alliance with the Dutch previously, and when the Dutch arrived in 1641, Kongo’s ruler forced Portuguese merchants in Kongo’s capital of São Salvador to leave. Kongo troops assisted the Dutch in military operations in Luanda and the surrounding regions ● In order to create a successful coalition, Njinga would have to recruit the many Mbundu leaders who opposed the Portuguese but did not want to become her subjects or become Imbangalas. Many of these leaders welcomed the Dutch and helped them out ● November 1641: Njinga’s ambassadors arrive in Luanda to speak with the Dutch. Pieter Moortamer, the Dutch representative in Angola, welcomed Njinga’s initiative because it would help the Dutch West India Company’s main goal, which was to defeated their Catholic enemy Spain (Spain and Portugal were under one leader from 1580 to 1640)

● Governor Menezes retreated to Massangano, which allowed Njinga’s troops to operate with impunity around the fort at Ambaca ● Ngola Hari was Njinga’s main target in this campaign! ● In the Dembos region, there was a popular uprising against the Portuguese. Njinga then moved her kilombo to the middle of the Dembos region while maintaining her headquarters in Matamba. This kilombo was huge and had livestock of all kinds ● Njinga’s two closest allies were the Dutch and the Dembos sobas ● By the end of 1642, Njinga had gotten all the sobas of the Dembos region to recognize her authority ● January 1643: the Dutch and Portuguese authorities signed a truce in Lisbon. The agreement was that the Portuguese would concede Luanda and other areas to the Dutch, and the Dutch would allow the Portuguese to return to their farms and travel freely to Luanda to sell slaves and other goods. But by May, the Dutch officials had broken the truce...they secretly sent troops to the areas that the Portuguese had reoccupied and they killed up to 40 soldiers and officials and took many Portuguese prisoners (including the governor) ● 1643: Ngola Hari writes to the Portuguese king to complain about Njinga persecuting him ● Njinga became suspicious of the Dutch when they made a truce with the Portuguese, but she was relieved when they broke the truce because “this signaled the possible demise of Portuguese rule in Angola (137) ● Njinga sent her army into Kongo ● King Garcia II of Kongo requested Dutch military assistance ● The Dutch West India Company wanted to build a relationship with Njinga because she controlled an enormous region from which 2,000-3,000 slaves came per year, so they did not help Garcia and instead sent messengers to Njinga to persuade her to keep her alliance with them ● Resentment of the Portuguese increased among the African population between 1644 and 1646 ● Meanwhile, Njinga strengthened her ties with Imbangala leaders and with sobas who had joined her cause, and her troops attacked the populations in Ambaca and Pungo Ndongo where many people were still loyal to the Portuguese ● 1644: Njinga’s troops killed 70 Portuguese officers and soldiers and took some more captive. One of them was Kabuku Kandonga, a Portuguese ally. Njinga ordered him to be released because he was a fellow Imbangala leader ● **Njinga’s success as an Imbangala leader had harmed her reputation among the other Imbangalas (139) ● Njinga put together an intricate court system in Matamba because she wanted to build up Mbundu political institutions there

● Njinga used most of the income she got from the slave of slaves she captured and from tributes to buy ammunition and guns, and cloths and jewels ● She had a public space built where she could receive ambassadors that was elaborately decorated ● The king of Portugal was very concerned about Njinga successfully establishing political centers in Matamba and the Dembos region ● Ngola Hari was focused on stopping Njinga. After Njinga’s troops’ triumph over the Portuguese near Ambaca, the Portuguese were sick and low on supplies while Njinga’s forces remained strong and continued to raid Ngola Hari’s lands ● Winter 1645: King of Portugal nominated Francisco de Sotomaior (the governor of Rio de Janeiro) to the post of governor general of Angola, and ordered him to put together an army to reconquer Angola ● Sotomaior arrived in Angola in July of 1645 with 260 soldiers. Sotomaior reported to the king that many Portuguese experienced in local warfare had been killed by Njinga’s Imbangalas. Also, the Dutch had banished hundreds of Portuguese to Brazil. This meant that the number of available white Portuguese troops was only 80 soldiers who protected the forts at Massangano and Muxima, and maybe another 130 at Cambambe and ambaca (plus 8,000 Mbundu bowmen). The “pathetic” state of the Portuguese forces encouraged Njinga to be even more aggressive ● Sotomaior (like other Portuguese governors before him) doubted that Njinga really had the military power and leadership skills to challenge the Portuguese power in Angola ● After Sotomaior arrived in Luanda, Njinga’s spies sent her regular updates about the Portuguese military plans. She knew that Sotomaior had appointed Gaspar Bores Madureira to lead the force against her ● She heard that the Portuguese captain of the cavalry was in a certain village and she sent Imbangala soldiers to attack the village and bring the captain to her, but her general and the soldiers found that the Portuguese captain had left when they got there. They killed or imprisoned most of the population and destroyed what they couldn’t take with them ● Sotomaior learned of this and rounded up his troops for a counterattack, and they successfully attacked Akibata’s (one of Njinga’s Imbangala generals) kilombo...they killed him and most of his soldiers ● The survivors came back to tell Njinga and she ordered them beheaded because it was bad luck that they brought her such bad news. Many of Njinga’s Mbundu supporters resubmitted themselves to the Portuguese after this defeat ● Njinga sent lots of slaves to the Dutch and asked for their help in moving against Ambaca...but Sotomaior was intent on breaking up her alliance with the Dutch ● Sotomaior ordered that Njinga be captured and immediately killed and her kilombo destroyed ● Sotomaior thought his troops would have a better chance against Njinga if they fought her now closer to Massangano

● March 1646: Borges Madureira puts together the largest land force Njnga had ever faced...a really huge army ● These forces arrived at Njinga’s kilombo and eventually succeeded in breaking through her defenses. Njinga escaped when the Portuguese entered her kilombo but she had to leave everything behind. Ngola Hari claimed everything in the house ● There were Dutch troops and their families living in the kilombo, meaning that Njinga had made these people her dependents ● Kambu (Njinga’s sister) was captured and sexually abused, but she remained very calm ● Borges Madureira learned that Njinga had been hiding some Portuguese prisoners in her kilombo but didn’t find them, and then found out that Njinga had sent these prisoners to the soba Kitexi ka Ndambi, who then turned them over to Borges Madureira ● Borges Madureira publicly killed twelve sobas and some of the Dembos rulers in the kilombo ● The Portuguese found letters written to Njinga by her sister Funji that revealed a lot about Njinga’s spy network ● The fact that Njinga escaped successfully means that she still had a strong support network in the area (who would hide her). Soon after her escape, she started planning her counterattack, and the Dutch were fully involved (she had a Dutch embassy led by Ferdinand van Chapelle) ● This time, instead of attacking the Portuguese with all her troops, she sent out small guerrilla forces that pillaged the lands of sobas friendly to the Portuguese ● April 1647: Njinga signed a document agreeing to work with the Portuguese to eliminate the Portuguese. This was a formal pact between equals ● 1647: Njinga learns that the Portuguese killed her sister Funji. Njinga showered the Dutch with gifts so they would help her save her sister Kambu ● Dutch soldiers started deserting to the Portuguese ● September - October 1647: Njinga, the Dutch, and the sobas in Dembos prepared for an attack on the Portuguese. But on Oct. 25th, the Portuguese attacked and were initially successfully, but then Njinga showed up and her forces and the Dutch forces defeated the Portuguese in a battle and killed Borges Madureira ● Njinga’s forces and the Dutch set fire to more than 200 villages of sobas who had joined with the Portuguese near Massangano ● The Portuguese knew that they had to keep the fort at Massangano from falling, so they upgraded the fort’s defenses ● Njinga had Njinga a Mona send the troops to set fires in several locations to distract the Portuguese guards so some soldiers could get into the fort, but this didn’t work ● August 1648: Njinga’s troops and dutch troops took the Portuguese by surprise and only 11 Portuguese remained alive in the end to surrender. Njinga and the Dutch killed many Africans and captured 3,000 Africans to sell as slaves

● Njinga planned to move against Ngola Hari in Pungo Ndongo and then finish off the Portuguese, but she didn’t know that a new governor, Salvador Correia de Sá, had arrived in Luanda with a huge armada ● De Sá sent a message to Ouman telling him to give up Luanda in three days and he would receive safe conduct, or they would continue to attack. The Dutch tried to stall negotiations and De Sá bombarded the city, and this got Ouman to agree to a peace treaty ● Njinga didn’t know about this. She eventually found out and retreated, and a few weeks later, she sent some of her troops to invade Kongo’s eastern province of Wandu where her Imbangalas had been operating. She gave the order to destroy the province, and they killed the provincial leader and many of his soldiers. They captured the priests and brought them before Njinga ● At the end of 1648, Njinga had to come up with a new strategy because the Dutch had broken their agreement with her and left, so she had to give up her plan of attacking Massangano. She shifted her focus to not expelling the Portuguese entirely, but instead making sure they could make no “political or economic headway in the interior unless they dealt with her” (158) ● Njinga’s three-pronged approach between 1648 and 1656: ○ She reestablished firm political control over Matamba and the lands between Matamba and Ndongo, regions that were the primary source of slaves. This forced De Sá and later governors to reopen political relations with her in order to resolve the slave trade issue ○ She initiated direct relations with the Capuchins (a religious order whose missionaries would serve as her political intermediaries with the Portuguese governors in Angola and with higher officials in Europe) ○ She developed plans to put Catholic beliefs and rituals in place of the Imbangala religious ideas and rituals ● By the end of 1656, Njinga had gotten her sister released, and she had confirmed her own right to rule Matamba as an independent kingdom with borders recognized by the Portuguese. She was also on her way to transforming Matamba into a Christian kingdom ● War still remained an essential element of her leadership. She kept using her army to intimidate sobas in the regions that bordered Kongo, Matamba, and Ndongo ● Njinga’s armies during her campaigns of the early 1650s were made up of men and women. She often led her soldiers herself ● 1653: the Imbangala Kabuku Kandonga (different from the previously mentioned person with the same name) broke his alliance with the Portuguese and agreed to join his kilombo with Njinga’s in Matamba...but the next year, Kabuku was captured by the Portuguese and sent to Brazil ● Njinga often used her army to resolve succession disputes in Ndongo in favor of candidates she supported. She helped João Muquila try to oust his brother Sebastião, but the Portuguese killed the captains who led this fight

● 1661: Njinga sent her army into battle against the Imbangala leader Kasanje after he had led his army in an attack against a soba in her lands. Her forces defeated Kasanje’s forces, and they celebrated with Imbangala rituals and a Christian service ● The Portuguese governors frequently asked the king of Portugal for permission to make war against Njinga again. The Overseas Council advised the king not to agree to this request and that instead, they should pardon Njinga and her two fellow African leaders for their betrayal during the period of Dutch occupation. Portuguese officials in Lisbon told officials in Luanda to go to war with Njinga only if they were certain that they had enough troops to protect Luanda ● Between 1648 and 1656, even though her army was engaging in military campaigns, Njinga was still looking for a diplomatic solution. ● 1643: Njinga began a long-term campaign to gain the confidence of the missionaries coming from Rome so that they would be willing to plead her case in Europe ● She often released missionaries that she captured, or if she kept them prisoner, she gave them more freedom than other captives ● 1648: Njinga captured two Spanish Capuchin missionaries and a Kongo priest from Wandu, which gave her an opportunity to initiate formal diplomatic relations with the Catholic Church ● She realized that one of the missionaries, Father Zelotes, was the priest who had first introduced her to Christianity in Luanda, and she made him her personal secretary ● Njinga told these missionaries that she did not eat human flesh because she knew this was an issue for the church. She gave the missionaries a letter addressed to the pope in which she promised to return to Christianity and invite Capuchin missionaries to her kingdom as soon as the war with the Portuguese was over ● She allowed the captured missionaries to leave in the company of a Kongo embassy ● The Capuchins were regarded with suspicion by the Portuguese and the Jesuits ● Father Cortona, the head of the Capuchins in Luanda, got a letter from Njinga saying that she wanted him to come and baptize her people. He knew he had to get support from Rome on this before he did anything, because Njinga had a reputation as a cannibal and a child killer ● 1651: Father Romano joined Father Cortona in Luanda. Father Cortona convinced Njinga’s sister Kambu to write a letter to Njinga to encourage her to give up her Imbangala lifestyle and return to Christianity ● Njinga gave a letter to Father Cortona (but addressed to the Propaganda Fide) apologizing for her transgressions and saying that other missionaries would be welcomed with open arms in her kingdom ● The Capuchins were reluctant to reach out to Njinga because they were a bit confused as to why she had given up Christianity and adopted practices that went against Christianity ● 1653: Father Cortona dispatched Father Antonio Maria de Monteprandone to Rome to make the case for founding a prefect of Matamba that would be separate from that of

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Kongo. This request was approved and cardinals in Rome selected missionaries to go to Matamba Njinga realized that she still had to come to a formal agreement wit...