Legitimacy and Political Power - Queen Njinga, 1624-1663 (John Thornton)

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Legitimacy and Political Power: Queen Njinga, 1624-1663 Author(s): John K. Thornton Source: The Journal of African History, Vol. 32, No. 1 (1991), pp. 25-40Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/182577Accessed: 02-03-2015 23:50 UTC

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J7ournal of African History, 32 (1991), pp. 25-40 25 Printed in Great Britain

LEGITIMACY AND POLITICAL POWER: QUEEN NJINGA, 1624-16631

BY JOHN K. THORNTON

Millersville University, Pennsylvania

QUEEN Njinga (often written Nzinga)2 is undoubtedly pre-colonial Africa's most famous, and certainly her best documented queen. She is also surely the most romanticized - given that her long fight against the Portuguese in seventeenth-century Angola, her survival on the throne of Ndongo-Matamba against considerable odds and her apparently bizarre personal behavior are the stuff that legend and romance are made of. By the I96os and I970S she had become firmly entrenched in Angolan nationalist and much of liberal Africanist historiography as a proto-nationalist heroine - the only heroic figure, in fact, upon whom MPLA and UNITA ideologues could agree.3

In 1975, however, Joseph C. Miller argued that Njinga was not a legitimate candidate for the throne of Ndongo when she came to power in I624 and proceeded to analyse most of her career as a long-lasting and largely unsuccessful search for that legitimacy.4 Viewed from this perspective, Njinga appears less heroic and more as a power-hungry scion of the Ndongo nobility.5

' An earlier version of this paper was presented at the African Studies Association (U.S.) Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado, in October I987 and was partially funded by a Faculty Development Grant from Millersville University of Pennsylvania. Revision has benefited from comments by Joseph C. Miller and Linda Heywood. Earlier support for this project was provided originally by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to translate the Araldi Mss of Cavazzi (I982-84); see n. 9.

2 I have adopted this spelling of her name (rather than the more common English form of Nzinga) because it seems to correspond to the rules of the new orthography of Kimbundu adopted by the People's Republic of Angola in 1980; see MPLA/PT, Instituto Nacional de Lfnguas [Maria Celeste P. A. Kounta], Histdrico sobre a Cria-fao dos Alfabetos em Li'nguas Nacionais (Lisbon, 1980), 64-6, where there are minimal pairs /nz/nj/. Here the sound of the Kimbundu /j/ is equivalent to the French or Portuguese /j/. I have been persuaded in this by the usage of Graziano Maria (Saccardo) de Leguzzano, an excellent speaker of Kimbundu, who also devoted much of his long career in Angola to historical research and who rendered her name as 'Jinga' or 'Njinga'; see his translation of Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi da Montecuccolo, Istorica Descrizione de' Tre Regni Congo, Angola ed Matamba (Bologna, I687) as Descripf o Historica dos Tr's Reinos Congo, Matamba e Angola (2 vols) (Lisbon, I965), and his later study, Congo e Angola con la storia dell'antica missione dei Cappuccini (3 vols) (Venice, I982-3).

3 For example, Walter Rodney, 'European actions and African reactions in Angola', in T. 0. Ranger (ed.), Aspects of Central African History (London, I968); Roy Glasgow, Nzinga: Resistencia Africana a Investida do Colonialismo Portugues em Angola, I582-I663 (Sao Paulo, I982, originally composed ca. I972). Also MPLA [Henrique Abranches], Historia de Angola (Porto, I976, originally composed I966), and UNITA, UNITA: Identity of a Free Angola (Jamba, I985), 2I.

4 Joseph C. Miller, 'Queen Nzinga of Matamba in a new perspective', J. Afr. Hist., XIII (I975), 20I-I6.

5 Abranches in the MPLA Historia de Angola, 69-72, had already noted that Njinga had class interests that set her apart from modern nationalists, though he, true to the



26 JOHN K. THORNTON

Miller was the first scholar to examine Njinga seriously in terms of the internal structure and ideology of African politics, rather than through her relationship to the Portuguese colonizers of Angola or to the Catholic Church.6 This perspective gave Miller the opportunity to show that, when viewed from the internal structure of Ndongo, Njinga was fighting a constant battle to legitimize her succession to office against opponents who saw her as an usurper unfit to rule. Once this point was grasped, much of Njinga's apparently bizarre behavior and her frequent shifts of alliance made good sense as strategies to balance her use of raw power with attempts to achieve legitimacy. More recently, Adriano Parreira has re-examined Miller's work and criticized elements of it, largely by suggesting that Njinga possessed greater legitimacy than Miller's reconstruction allowed.7

Miller focused largely on Njinga's search for legitimacy from sources outside the kingdom of Ndongo - the Portuguese, Imbangala and Matamba. But Njinga never abandoned the campaign for justification within her home state either, and this domestic quest may well have been more important than her search for external alliances and supporters. Njinga never gave up the idea that she was queen of Ndongo and had a right to rule that state, even when she had to re-locate her capital in Matamba and surrender much of Ndongo's original territory to the Portuguese or to her principal domestic rivals, Hari a Kiluanji (I624-6) and his successor, Ngola Hari (I626-64). It was probably for this reason that she sought at all costs to maintain a presence on the Kindonga islands in the Kwanza river, the capital of Ndongo when she came to power. Though she lost them twice to the Portuguese and to her domestic rivals in I626 and I628, she reoccupied them, at some cost, as soon afterwards as possible.8 She kept Kindonga Island as a symbolic capital and carefully maintained the burial grounds of her royal ancestors right up to the end of her life, despite the strategic vulnerability of the site.9

If Njinga wanted to be queen, was she entitled to the position, or was she simply an usurper? In trying to answer this question both Miller and

Marxist-nationalist conception of history, argued that she was progressive through her

resistance to Portugal. 6 She was assessed largely in the context of Portuguese colonialism in Rodney,

'European Actions'; Abranches, Historia de Angola; and Glasgow, Nzinga. Her re-

lationship to the Church forms the principal theme of the most important and best

documented study of her by a priest, Jean Cuvelier and 0. Boone, Koningin Nzinga van

Matamba (Bruges, I957). It was on this theme that Cuvelier and Boone were subjected

to a scathing review by Jean Stengers in Zaire, XI (I957), I059-60, a review which nevertheless passed over the major merit of the book's meticulous research.

Adriano Parreira, Economia e Sociedade em Angola na Epoca da Rainha Jinga, Setculo

XVII (Lisbon, I990), I78-83. Parreira has benefited especially from a fuller consultation

of the documents of Fernao de Sousa (see Heintze [ed.] cited in n. 20), published after

Miller wrote. 8 For the chronology of these events, see Beatrix Heintze, 'Das Ende des unabhangigen

Staates Ndongo (Angola): neue Chronologie und Reinterpretation (I6I7-I630)',

Paideuma, XXVII (I98I), 222-9, 246-53. 9 This position is clear from notes of the visit of Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi da

Montecuccolo to the Kindonga islands in I662, just a year before Njinga's death. Mss

Araldi (Modena), Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi da Montecuccolo, 'Missione evangelica al

Regno de Congo', vol. A, Book 2, I66-74 (Mss composed between i66o and i665 and

revised up to i668). A modern edition (by John Thornton) and English translation (by

Carolyn Beckingham) is currently in preparation.



LEGITIMACY AND POLITICAL POWER 27

Parreira assumed that Ndongo possessed a fairly clear-cut constitution that specified who could and who could not rule, Miller producing reasons why she could not, Parreira arguing that she could. The idea of a constitution, whether as a fixed document, as Americans are likely to envision it, or as a set of well-established and consistently followed customs and precedents, as it is often used in historical literature,10 is crucial here.

Ndongo's constitution would have to be found in the orally preserved traditions which recalled historical precedents and in commentaries upon them that would have been known to most of the elite of the kingdom. Not being an explicit text, this corpus would have left both seventeenth-century legists and modern scholars to discover the relevant principles by studying the traditions. Both Njinga's right to rule, and her rivals' disputation of her right, would have to be established by reference to these historical precedents.

Njinga certainly used this mode of justification in discussing her own policies and decisions. Her approach is revealed by a case cited by Antonio Gaeta da Napoli, who resided at her court from i655 to i658. During one interview with Njinga, Gaeta suggested that she should not allow her most senior officials to disagree or argue with her. In order to answer him, Njinga related a story of her father's reign in which a nobleman ('macotta' [makota]) had entered another man's house and stolen some goods. He was surprised by the owner as he was leaving and was taken to the king. The king, however, refused to punish him and dismissed the case, saying 'I will make restitution, but I must protect the good name of my soldiers'.11 This case, she said, was the precedent she had followed.

Any discussion of legitimacy, whether by actors of the seventeenth century or by modern historians, assumes that resort to these historical precedents will produce a clear and unambiguous answer on the correct rules to follow. But such an attitude also assumes that the constitution is essentially fixed and unchanging. Indeed, constitutions may appear unchanging at times, but typically such times are situations in which there is a stable, unchallenged political establishment, in which most political actors accept the historical or genealogical validity of the precedents and are willing to channel their personal or group ambitions along the lines provided in the constitution.

But the idea of a fixed constitution can hold only in a situation of stability and widespread agreement on what the rules are. In situations where political conditions are changing, the fixity of constitutional law quickly breaks down. This has been demonstrated by several recent studies of 'customary law' in colonial Africa. For example, Martin Chanock's study of customary law in Zambia and Malawi argues that in the confused period of the late nineteenth century there was no consensus on what law was, if there had ever been a law. A uniform law appeared only with the establishment of a dominant colonial state, as traditionalists, colonial lawyers and the administration gradually

10 For example, see the lengthy discussion on the medieval German constitution found in Geoffrey Barraclough, The Origins of Modern Germany (2nd rev. ed., London, I947),

which sought constitutional principles by examining events and their descriptions in chronicles and other contemporary sources.

11 Antonio Gaeta da Napoli, La Maravigliosa Conversione alla Santa Fede di Cristo della Regina Singa e del svo Regno di Matamba nell'Africa Meridionale, ed. Francesco Maria Gioia da Napoli (Naples, i668), I88-9I.



28 JOHN K. THORNTON

shaped a 'customary' law out of bits and pieces of received precedent to make a new legal system that served their own needs.12

In seventeenth-century Ndongo these issues were not resolved by a colonial state, of course, but could be settled by the emergence of a powerful ruler or stable polity which would enforce law and ensure that the historical precedents supporting his or her claims were accepted as legitimate. But at the time of Njinga, and for some years before her succession, this comfortable situation of clearly defined constitutional precedent was far from being established, and various rival social groups struggled to create a constitution that favored them.

As with all such situations of change, the political struggle of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries engendered rivalries and power struggles which reduced consensus about the exact nature of the constitution. The effect of political rivalry on constitutional consensus can be illustrated by the situation in the neighboring kingdom of Kongo, where a succession crisis between i6I5 and I630 had generated a substantial correspondence from rival factions of the Kongo royal family and their supporters, in which they often cited completely opposed principles extracted from the 'most ancient customs and laws' as found in the 'chronicles of those kings'. 13

However, it would be wrong to use these situations where historical precedent was disputed, or rival versions of tradition were cited to assert that constitutions or constitutional reasoning did not exist, even there. Were that true, of course, the rivals would not have bothered to cite precedents as they did. All might agree that there was, or at least ought to be, a constitution. Rather their conflict was over exactly what it was. As with their Kongo neighbors, therefore, rivals in Ndongo could cite historical precedents or myths to support their positions, and like their counterparts to the north they could also draw on a large and heterogeneous group of precedents and rival versions of the country's history.

Ultimately, of course, the real resolution of the constitutional problems lay as much in who could win the struggles in the material field, through marshalling supporters or armies, as in who could convince their rivals of the truth of historical or legal precedents. The arguments of the material victors were obviously quite likely to be accepted even if they were untrue, both in the seventeenth century and in the modern colonial and post-colonial states.

Although we cannot know all the details of raw political power in Njinga's time, the limited source material describing the structure of Ndongo from the mid-sixteenth century gives us an idea. When the earliest Portuguese arrived in Ndongo in the 1560s they found a fairly decentralized state. The king ruled along with a number of powerful, territorially based nobles (the

12 Martin Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi

and Zambia (Cambridge, UK, I985). For a similar argument see Charles Ambler, 'The renovation of custom in colonial Kenya: the 1932 generation succession ceremonies in

Embu', J. Afr. Hist., xxx (I989), 139-56.

13 John Thornton, 'The correspondence of the Kongo kings, I614-35: problems of internal written evidence on a Central African kingdom', Paideuma, xxx (I987), 4I0-I8.

The quotation comes from a letter of Bras Correa (President of the Royal Council of Kongo) to Monsignor Juan Bautista Vives (Kongo's 'Protector' at the Vatican), 20 Oct.

I6I9, in Ant6nio Brasio (ed.), Monumenta Missionaria Africana (Ist series, I5 volumes)

(Lisbon, 1952-88), vol. 6, 408.




makota, singular dikota)," who represented a check on his absolute power.15 Though the documents do not prove it, it is likely that the makota also held the right to elect, or at least confirm, the ruler in power, while enjoying rights to succession in their own territories.16

But the kings of the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries moved to centralize their authority, especially making use of royal slaves, the ijiko (singular kijiko). They had also perhaps asserted the right to hereditary succession according to the rules of kinship rather than election by the makota. Late-sixteenth-century kings drew substantial revenues from vil- lages of their slaves planted throughout the country,17 and at the same time slave officials managed affairs at court and formed the elite and officer corps of the royal army. Moreover, they placed the ijiko as judicial and military supervisors over the territorial nobles, thus reducing their power while insuring the collection of taxes.18 This use of slaves greatly enhanced royal revenues and probably allowed the rulers to take in many members of the lesser nobility as clients. Royally appointed officials could be sent on missions to collect taxes from the nobility, thus becoming enriched.'9

It was this growing and increasingly powerful class of court slaves that supported Njinga in her quest for power, and her struggle against rivals over who controlled the military slaves (kimbare, plural imbare) was the crux of her early relations with Portugal.20 What is more, Njinga's first rival, Hari a Kiluanji, was essentially a dikota who might benefit from reversing the tendency to centralization under royal slaves that benefited Njinga. As Fernao de Sousa, the Portuguese governor of Angola, put it, when speaking of the 'quizicos' (kijiko), who were 'captives of the king', one could dispense

14 The term is mentioned only in Jesuit descriptions composed around I 58o; see Pierre du Jarric, Histoire des Choses les plus Meomorables Advenues des Portugais... (3 vols., Bordeaux, i6io), vol. 2, 79.

" Letter of Antonio Mendes, 9 May 1563, in Brasio (ed.), Monumenta, vol. 2, 5o8-io; Apontamentos sobre Paulo Dias de Novais (O56o-6i) in ibid. vol. 2, 467-8; Francisco de Gouveia to Jesuit General, I Nov. I564, ibid. vol. I5, 230-I.

16 This structure is mentioned as the normal state in the Jesuit accounts. It may well have been informed by the kind of historical precedents that are found in the later traditions, though they do not provide a full text; see du Jarric, Histoire, vol. 2, 79-80.

17 Arquivo Hist6rico Ultramarino (Lisbon), Papeis avulsos, Angola, Caixa I, document dated 4 March I612, quoted in Beatrix Heintze, 'Unbekanntes Angola: Der Staat Ndongo im i6. Jahrhundert', Anthropos, LXXII (I977), 776 n. 13I.

18 Francisco Rodrigues, 'Hist6ria da residencia dos padres da Companhia de Jesus em Angola', (1594) in Brasio (ed.), Monumenta, vol. 4, 559, 562.

19 Garcia Sim6es to Provincial of Portugal, 20 OCt. I575, in Brasio (ed.), Monumenta, vol. 3, I39.

20 Fernao de Sousa to Governo, I9 March I625, in Beatrix Heintze (ed.), Fontes para a Historia de Angola do SeCculo XVII. I. Memorias, RelafJes e Outros Manuscritos da Colectanea Documental de Ferndo de Sousa (i622-I635). II. Cartas e Documentos Oficiais da Colectanea Documental de Ferndo de Sousa (i624-i635) (2 vols., Stuttgart, I985-8), vol. 2, I29; 'RellaSAo de Dongo que foy a ElRey nosso Senhor' (6 Sept. I625), in ibid. vol. I, 199. Reflecting on the period some years later, de Sousa felt that the conflict over control of the imbare was the issue that changed the relations between the two powers; de Sousa to GonSalo di Sousa and his brothers, undated but compiled between I625 and I63I, in ibid. vol. i, 227.



30 JOHN K. THORNTON

with the ruler were it not for them,21 and the country might revert to rule by sobas (nobles, of whom the dikota formed a special group), each of whom was 'lord of his morinda [group of free people] and lands where they live'.22 Indeed, it was perhaps this fundamental struggle, more than the fact that Hari a Kiluanji had sought Portuguese support, in exchange for giving the governor his vassalage, that set him and his Portuguese supporters against Njinga, who had herself initially offered to swear vassalage to Portugal and to accept the terms of her predecessors.23

The war of the Ndongo succession in the early i620S was thus as much a struggle over the fundamental constitution of Ndongo as simply an episode in the Portuguese invasion of Angola, and Hari a Kiluanji and Ngola Hari were therefore more than simply Portuguese puppets. This point is well illustrated by the earlier attempt of the Portuguese to establish a puppet ruler in Ndongo after a victory over Njinga's predecessor and brother, Ngola Mbande, in about I621. The puppet, Samba a Ntumba, had met with general rejection 'as not being the legitimate son or descendant of the kings' and quickly had to be withdrawn,24 while Portuguese support of Hari a Kiluanji always met with some local approval. On the other hand, de Sousa was often told that Hari a Kiluanji's successor, Ngola Hari, was not a legitimate king since his mother had been a slave.25

Clearly, the people in a position to make decisions were moved by claims to legitimacy, for in rejecting Samba a Ntumba and accepting Hari a Kiluanji in these terms they were expressing themselves in terms of historical precedents. Yet both decisions were essentially connected to acknowledging a major Portuguese role in the state and surrendering some sovereignty. Obviously, there was a limit to how much the precedents of the kingdom could be manipulated by the Portuguese or by an Mbundu. If Ndongo did not have a fixed, widely accepted constitution, constitutional thinking still functioned as if it did.

In order to determine which of the constitutional principles operated in all these cases one may examine the historical precedents available to the partisans in the events. Did ijiko have the right to enthrone Njinga against

21 Fernao de Sousa, 'RellaSao de Dongo', in ibid. vol. I, 200. I'he passage is ambiguous in Portuguese: 'porque sdo quizacos que he o mesmo que captivos d'E/Rey, e faltando rej acabardo co elle'.

22 Ibid. vol. I, 200. De Sousa was responding here to discussions as to whether Ndongo should be annexed under its own ruler and assessed a tribute, or treated like the province of Ilamba near Luanda had been, where the royal group had been disbanded. All such plans were contingent, of course, on the Portuguese ability to make the conquests they envisioned, which in the event in Ndongo they were not.

23 See the telling letter of Fernao de Sousa to the Governo, I5 Aug. I624, ibid. vol. 2,

85, in which he notes receiving these terms from Njinga and finding them acceptable. It was only later, as the struggle over the slaves came to a head, that he began to doubt the wisdom of this policy. Still later, in retrospect, he formed the opinion that Njinga had a long-standing hatred of the Portuguese and Christianity and could never negotiate. See de Sousa's retrospective 'InformaSAo que mandey ao Conselho da Fazenda', 6 Aug. 163 1, in ibid. vol. I, 20I-2.

24 Fernao de Sousa, 'LembranSa do estado em que achej ElRey de Angola', Autumn

i624, in ibid. vol. I, 195. For chronology and background, see Heintze, 'Ende', 203.

25 Fernao de Sousa to GonSalo di Sousa, ibid. vol. I, 229-30, a retrospective analysis of his proceedings. The doubts about Ngola Hari's claims are set out in 'LembranSa das rezoens que ha pera Angolla Are nao ser rey' (Late summer i629), in ibid. vol. I, 209.




the wishes of the makota, or did the makota have the final say in succession? Could these electors abandon hereditary succession should they choose, especially if an eligible heir were lacking? If hereditary factors had to be considered, what determined who was eligible to succeed? Finally, did the precedents exclude females from power, as partisans of Hari a Kiluanji assured Fernao de Sousa,26 or did the freedom of choice allowed electors (whether ijiko or makota) mean that potentially they could choose anyone?

The earliest documents discuss historical precedent in specific cases, for example, the advice that de Sousa heard that women could not rule or his own memorandum indicating that Ngola Hari was also illegitimate because his mother was a slave. No doubt all parties referred to an extended historical description of the kingdom's past, but the earliest texts do not cite it. It was only after i655 when full versions of these histories were recorded by Italian Capuchin missionaries, that the historical precedents favored by the rivals in the still unresolved constitutional crisis become available for study by modern historians.

Unfortunately, these historical traditions are not verbatim renderings of the testimony of single informants whose social and political positions can be identified. Instead, they are histories assembled from a variety of informants by foreign missionaries who believed that it was possible to discover the early history of the country, as opposed to its legal and constitutional structure, from them. Not being the raw testimony that would be cited in a specific case, their value as sources for understanding precedent is reduced.

To make matters even more complicated, Njinga's court in the i65os was riven by new rivalries and dissension beyond those of the earlier period. The most significant of these were caused by Njinga's decision to make a close alliance with the Imbangala, for they had different ideas about a number of significant elements of political structure than did the elite of Ndongo.

Although the origin of the Imbangala is unclear, by the time of the first descriptions of them they functioned essentially as freebooting bands of mercenary soldiers.27 They recruited their members by enslaving adolescent boys. They even maintained that they had no children themselves, killing all children when they were born. Within the band, promotion was based on loyalty and service, and selection ito positions of leadership was ultimately a democratic one, conducted by an election of the senior commanders. These rules recognized no lines of descent or hereditary principles, since the origin of all alike was held to have been as 'slaves .

26 Fernao de Sousa to King, 2i Feb. I626, in Brasio (ed.), Monumenta, vol. 7, 4I7. 27 Joseph Miller, foremost historian of the Imbangala, has most recently proposed that

the ultimate origins of the Imbangala were among people displaced by droughts in the central highlands of Angola and refugees from the extension of slave raiding and trading activities in the same area; see 'The paradoxes of impoverishment in the Atlantic zone', in David Birmingham and Phyllis Martin (eds.), History of Central Africa (2 vols., London and New York, I983), vol. I, I39-41.

28 The best secondary account remains that of Joseph C. Miller, Kings and Kinsmen: The Imbangala Impact on the Mbundu of Angola (Oxford, I976). See Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book I, I8-73, and Book 3. An early account is in E. G. Ravenstein (ed.), The Strange Adventures of Andrew Battel ii Angola and Adjacent Regions (London, I90I [account first published in I625]).



32 JOHN K. THORNTON

In I624, Njinga, like her brother before her, hired Imbangala bands as mercenaries to supplement her following in Ndongo, just as other states of the area, including the Portuguese colonial forces, customarily did. Kaza, her chief Imbangala ally, had protected Njinga's brother's son and had turned him over to her at her request, and other Imbangala armies also occasionally supported her.29 But these alliances were not always secure, and in the context of the succession dispute Njinga had to form a more secure base of support. Thus, when two Imbangala armies changed sides in the midst of a battle in i628 and nearly cost Njinga her freedom,30 she decided to 'become an Imbangala' herself, after first attempting unsuccessfully to take over the Imbangala company of Kasanje (about i632).31

From that point, Njinga's own army operated like an Imbangala company, and apparently her own forces were integrated into the new army which functioned under Imbangala rules. By the I65os, Njinga Mona ('Njinga's son') was the senior commander after the queen and was regarded by most as the successor of Njinga as commander and ruler under Imbangala rules.32 But if Njinga's taking in Njinga Mona as her nominal son implied that she hoped to join her ideas about hereditary descent with Imbangala rules of free election, her subsequent decisions clearly showed her to have no such commitment.

Njinga and her partisans from Ndongo's elite did not favor any application of Imbangala rules, for they always considered the decision to join the Imbangala as a desperate expedient and not a permanent policy. Starting in the late I640s, Njinga and her supporters symbolically attempted to oust Imbangala influence by returning to Christianity. The queen had been baptized in i622. Later, she convinced Gaeta that she had always been a Christian and had been driven only by extreme circumstances to become Imbangala.33 Christian reconversion had the advantage of allowing her to repudiate the bloody sacrifices, cannibalism and child killing of the Imban- gala, and with them the Imbangala rules.

Reconversion also allowed her to settle affairs with Portugal, who might then second her ideas about hereditary succession in Ndongo politics. In her

29 For an overview of the Imbangala armies in Ndongo and its vicinity during this period, see Fernao de Sousa, 'Guerras do Reino de Angola' (undated, but after 4 Aug. I630), in Heintze, Fontes, vol. I, 2I2; for the politics of purchasing their services, see Heintze, 'Ende, 202-3, 209, 2 I, 22I, 249, 256-7.

30 The best account is in Ant6nio de Oliveira de Cadornega, Historia Geral das Guerras Angolanas (i68o-8i) (mod. ed. Matias Delgado and Manuel Alves da Cunha, 3 vols., Lisbon, I940-2, reissued I972), vol. I, I48-50. Though written much later (Cadornega arrived in Angola only in I639) it is based on the testimony of old Portuguese veterans and their service reports of earlier actions. The de Sousa documents, though contemporary, provide less detail on this action.

31 De Sousa to Goncalo di Sousa, in Heintze, Fontes, vol. I, 345. The dramatic conversion of Njinga to Imbangala rules is described on the basis of posterior testimony in Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, 35-7. She is alleged to have pounded up a baby in a grain mortar, like the legendary Ndumba Tembo, founder of the Imbangala company of Kasanje, and to have obtained the right to rule as an Imbangala; Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, 35-7.

32 Cavazzi, Istorica Descrizione, Book 6, no. I23.

3 Gaeta, Maravigliosa Conversione, 97, 99-I03, 2II-I3. Even Cavazzi, who was generally negative in his assessments of Njinga, believed that she was good to priests and honored Christianity during this period. Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, 64.




negotiations with the Portuguese in I655 she was careful to demand that they recognize her sister Barbara as her heir and specifically none of her 'slaves' - excluding either ambitious ijiko or the Imbangala.34 She obviously hoped to restore the idea that descent should count in any election. Even knowing that neither she nor Barbara had any children, she sought to promote Joao Guterres Ngola Kanini, scion of a junior branch of the Ndongo royal family, to an important position. This move seems to have been intended to insure that some member of the Mbundu nobility would continue to rule, even if rule by descent might complicate matters by making potential rivals who had compromised themselves by service to the Portuguese eligible.35

Njinga's court split into two factions over these points, a 'Christian' one that favored Mbundu rules (though it might still not be completely resolved as to what they were) and an 'Imbangala' party that favored Imbangala rules. Thus, in addition to the questions unresolved from the succession dispute of I624, Imbangala precedents that allowed an unrestricted choice by military commanders initiated into the Imbangala society without regard for descent joined Mbundu ideas about election by other officials, makota, and about eligibility by descent.

All these points were jumbled into the traditions as Cavazzi and others recorded them in the mid-i65os. Needless to say, such a complex situation makes it very hard to use these traditions to understand exactly how individuals used precedents from the whole assemblage. The traditions do, however, contain sufficient information to give modern historians a good idea of the range of these precedents and how they might have been used in general.

The earliest version, recorded sometime before I658 by Antonio Gaeta da Napoli,36 came directly from Njinga's court. Gaeta had journeyed to Njinga's court in I655 to implement the terms of the peace treaty that Njinga had just completed with the Portuguese government, in which Njinga agreed to allow missionaries to reside in her kingdom. He mentions specifically as his informant an African priest, probably Calisto Zelotes dos Reis Magros from Kongo, who had lived with Njinga since i648 and was her personal confessor, as well as other unnamed Africans at her court who probably were also members of the Christian faction.37 All these informants would have given him more or less entirely the version of the tradition that Njinga and her party favored. However, Gaeta also amplified this account with documents that he found at the Portuguese archives in Massangano. a military

34 See Njinga [D. Ana de Sousa] to Governor of Angola, I3 Dec. I655, in Brasio (ed.), Monumenta, vol. II, 526.

3 Cadornega, Histo'ria, vol. I, 353. Njinga sought to marry him to Barbara, but when that strategy failed, he arranged for Barbara to marry Njinga Mona, perhaps in the aim of a compromise between the aristocratic and Imbangala rules. Gaeta da Napoli, Maravigliosa Conversione, 280-2.

36 Gaeta da Napoli refers to an account of Ndongo history which he had written, which he called the 'Relatione' in a letter to the Secretary of the Propaganda Fide in Rome, shortly after he left Matamba in June, I658 in Brasio (ed.), Monumenta, vol. I2, I60-2. Gioia da Napoli, editor of the account (see citation in n. iI), is often cited in bibliographies as author, though he states in his unpaginated introduction that he wrote the book from a 'Relatione sent to me by Antonio Gaeta da Napoli'.

3 Gaeta da Napoli, Maravigliosa Conversione, I34-48. Though Gaeta identifies his informant only as a 'black priest of the country' who was 'well versed in the antiquities of kingdom', the identification of this source as Calisto Zelotes dos Reis Magros is

2 AFH 32



34 JOHN K. THORNTON

post in regular contact with Ndongo, and oral tradition from older Portu- guese residents of Angola, which might well give a very different slant to the resulting history. This distorting effect is reduced, however, by the fact that the Portuguese documents referred only to the later events of the history and not to the earlier sections on state 'origins' crucial for constitutional thinking.38

If Gaeta's account of Ndongo's origin is largely partisan to Queen Njinga, Cavazzi's account is more problematic. Cavazzi came to Angola in I654, and his varied missionary career took him to virtually all the sections of the country, starting with a long residence at the court of Njinga's principal rival, Ngola Hari, from I655 to i658. He visited Njinga's court briefly in i658 and then stayed there permanently from i66o until early in I664, during which time he officiated at the queen's funeral in December I663.39 Cavazzi's account of Ndongo traditions was probably commenced in i66o, and the presently extant version was completed in i665 but updated by marginal notes until i668.40

Unlike Gaeta, who based his account largely on the testimony of a single informant, supplemented by others who were likely to be of the same party in the disputes, Cavazzi's account was based on a variety of informants of widely differing allegiances. Cavazzi's informants probably included partisans of both Ngola Hari and Njinga, and perhaps also the military as well as the Imbangala Christian factions within her court, since he has detailed versions of Imbangala traditions as well, Portuguese documents and oral testimony, and even published books.4' Trying to reconcile these two accounts and reconstruct a 'true' constitution of Ndongo from the sources embedded in them represents a ferocious problem for historians, and indeed, even to recreate an accurate king list using these materials presents

virtually certain. He was one of the few ordained Africans in the area and, since his capture in Wandu in Kongo in I 648, the only priest resident in Matamba. See Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, 77.

38 Ibid. I49-72. The possibility that some of this Portuguese tradition affected the account cannot be ruled out entirely, for the Portuguese also had versions of Ndongo history, largely collected in the late sixteenth century by Jesuit priests. These accounts do not contain the historical anecdote crucial for constitutional mythology. On some of these early sources, see Joseph C. Miller and John Thornton, 'The chronicle as source, history and historiography: the Catclogo dos Governadores de Angola', Paideuma, xxxiii (1987),

375-9- " For a detailed account of Cavazzi's travels, see Leguzzano's biography in his

translation of Cavazzi's Istorica Descrizione, Descripf do historica, vol. 2, 430-2. 40 Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, 1-24. Interlineal and

marginal references, as well as scraps of documents attached to pictures in the front matter, make it clear that the version found here is not the first version of the Mss that Cavazzi wrote. I have argued in the introduction to my critical edition (in preparation) that Cavazzi probably began writing this history in about i66o.

41 For example, his account of the 'Jaga' invasion is based on Joao dos Santos, Etiopia Oriental (Lisbon, i609). He also includes an account of the Portuguese invasion that clearly came from local Portuguese sources and resembles that found in Gaeta da Napoli (based on Massangano archives and local Portuguese tradition). He himself says, in 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, I9, that his account of 'what I have written of the Jagas and what remains to be written on Queen Ginga is from personal witness and conversations during the course of twelve years travel...'. Cavazzi's mention of twelve years would make this passage date to i666, which is unlikely, as the Mss carries the date of i665.




thorny problems.42 However, the texts do show us what was probably the constitutional reality of Ndongo in the mid-seventeenth century: rival precedents which could be cited by diverse parties to support their positions. Which ones can be ascribed to Njinga's court, to factions within her court or to Ngola Hari and his Portuguese supporters does not matter so much as to recognize the prospects for constitutional argument they present.

In discussing these precedents, it is best to consider two aspects. One concerned the basic constitution of the state, how kings were selected and the relative powers and positions of its various constituent elements (ijiko, makota, royal descendants). The second aspect concerned eligibility for succession by rules of descent, insofar as they applied. The first element was largely contained in the stories of the kingdom's origin and accounts of the succession of various kings. The second element was contained in the various genealogies of the kings and other important personages given in the traditions.

Gaeta's tradition probably represents the closest that we can come to the selection of historical anecdotes and precedents that Njinga favored to support her position in the constitution of the country. According to this tradition, Ndongo was founded by a wise and generous blacksmith, Angola Bumbambula, who came to the area from Kongo and founded the country.43 In central Africa, blacksmith kings are typically seen as essentially con- ciliatory rulers of decentralized politics.44 This general idiom was not restricted to Ndongo, for when King Pedro IV of Kongo sought to conciliate factions in the civil wars in his state in the early eighteenth century, his ideologues also represented Kongo's founder as a wise and skilful blacksmith.45

Such a blacksmith tradition would accommodate a collective leadership for king and followers in Ndongo and perhaps represented the constitutional foundation for the power of the makota. If Njinga admitted the validity of this tradition, it was because it was too widely known and supported to be discredited or forgotten. But the Gaeta tradition goes on to emphasize Njinga's primacy among these equals by saying that the blacksmith was succeeded by a wicked son, who was driven from power by one of his wronged subjects, Chiluangi Quiasamba (Kiluanji kia Samba), who then seized royal power and subsequently took the title of Ngola, and whose son Ngola Kiluanji founded the dynasty that was ruling in Njinga's day.46 Forceful, military seizures of power would generally establish a more authoritarian precedent for a king who could rule by command and thus allow the political centralization of the late sixteenth century to be justified without effacing the blacksmith tradition and its implied support for the makota.

42 See the attempt to use the traditions for historical reconstruction in Beatrix Heintze, 'Written sources, oral traditions and oral traditions as written sources: the steep and thorny way to early Angolan history', Paideuma, XXXIII (i987), 263-87.

43 Gaeta da Napoli, Maravigliosa Conversione, I34-6. 44 On the imagery of the blacksmith, see Pierre de Maret, 'The smith's myth and the

origin of leadership in Central Africa', in Randi Haaland and Peter Shinnie (eds.), African Iron Working - Ancient and Traditional (Bergen, I985), 73-87.

45 On the changes in Kongo tradition and their connection to the civil wars, see John Thornton, The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition, I64I-I7I8 (Madison, I983), II7-I9. 46 Gaeta da Napoli, Maravigliosa Conversione, 136-43.

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36 JOHN K. THORNTON

Cavazzi's later version includes other precedents not found in Gaeta's, that extend the precedent for Njinga's personal and military power. For example, he cites an event that would create a precedent that kings should be elected, not necessarily following some rigid rule of descent, by noting that when an early king, Angola Chiluange Quiandambi, died without heirs 'they elected as king... a grandson... of the first king'.47 He also provided precedent for election by court officials, the tendala, manigico, manilumbo and manimiscotte as opposed to the makota, for by failing to gain their support another ruler, Angola Bandi, had lost his claim to the throne.48 These officials were mostly slaves, and thus the account established a precedent for these slave officials to resolve succession issues.

Cavazzi's historical account is especially supportive of the power of the slaves in its tales of the slave and companion of Angola Mussuri, Ndongo's first king and, like the first king of Gaeta's account, a blacksmith. Angola Mussuri elevated this slave to the position of tendala, or chief slave official. When Angola Mussuri grew old, the tendala buried the old man alive and seized power for himself, an act for which he received no punishment and which had the constitutional function of establishing the right of the slaves to intervene in royal affairs. On the other hand, this slave founded no dynasty, and upon his death the kingdom reverted to its natural heir, the daughter of the Angola Mussuri.

The prominence of slaves in these precedents seems to support all of Njinga's general contentions for, while she favored the idea of election by slave officials (her own probable route to power), she still believed that descent ought to play a role in determining who should be elected, for her own claim rested firmly on the fact that she was a sister of her predecessor, who was himself of the royal line. The genealogies of the tradition and Njinga's claims to be legitimate by descent were significant not only in establishing her equality to another legitimate heir, Ngola Hari, but also in her attempt to defend the idea of succession by descent against Imbangala claims to rule by power alone.

Thus, Njinga used genealogy to support her claim to the throne of Ndongo against aristocratic rivals who might claim it by descent and simultaneously referred to narratives that established the right of the aristocracy as a group to rule her state and showed that this aristocracy ought to be properly descended according to rules. Njinga supported her claims with genealogies that helped her cause while hurting that of Ngola Hari. Both Gaeta and Cavazzi place Angola Hari as a descendant of a junior son of the founder,50 while the main line of descent passes through the first son. Gaeta's tradition has this primary line an unbroken succession from the first king down to Njinga.51

Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, I2. 48 Ibid. I5.

49 Ibid. 5-7. 50 For our purposes here, the 'founder' is not the person named as the creator of the

kingdom itself, Angola Mussuri or Angola Bumbambula, but rather Ngola Chiluangi or

Chiluangi Angola, the founder of the ruling dynasty. Although Cavazzi and Gaeta

disagree on the exact relationships among the earlier kings, both derive the genealogies of

the leading families from this figure. 51 Gaeta da Napoli, Maravigliosa Conversione, I44-5; Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione

evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, I0.




On the other hand, Cavazzi's genealogy contains elements which might better support claims of Ngola Hari, perhaps derived from informants heard while the missionary resided at his court. For one thing, Cavazzi does not show the royal line as an unbroken descent from the founder but includes the precedent of Njinga Angola Quilombo Quiacasenda, who, according to Cavazzi's tradition (but not Gaeta's), was elected from a junior line when the senior line died out after the death of Angola Chiluangi Chiandambi.2 It was from this line that he has Njinga descended, and it was a line which had no better claim than that of Ngola Hari. Cavazzi also includes a claim that Njinga's predecessor and brother, Ngolambande (Ngola Mbandi), had no right to the throne because he was a second son of his father and moreover was the son by a slave wife rather than the first wife. He had illegally seized power and murdered his brother.53 None of these precedents discrediting Njinga's claim to rule is in Gaeta's version of the tradition, which has Njinga's brother simply succeed his father from a legitimate line.

Both the constitutional and genealogical precedents found in the traditions provided Njinga with the claims that she made to rule the country: that she was properly descended from the main royal line, while her rivals were not, and that she had been elected by the proper officials. Her opponents, on the other hand, adduced other precedents to discredit her: that she was a female and thus ineligible and that other claims by descent were as good or better than hers. Ngola Hari was descended from a junior branch of the royal family, but there were precedents for election of such heirs. Perhaps there was the implication that an election carried out by the makota rather than the court slave officials might have a different result.

However, if historical precedents from a variety of conflicting accounts of Ndongo's history could be cited selectively to support various positions, and if the 'true' constitution of the state was often created by the version of the history of whoever held power, there were clearly some elements of the story that were sufficiently widely accepted that even the victorious could not deny them. Precedent could be chosen, and perhaps even created, but even in situations of conflict it could not simply be created out of thin air.

Thus, Njinga was never able to cite a suitable precedent for a woman to rule. She was clearly aware that being female reduced her legitimacy in the eyes of even her supporters. This was true even though the histories circulating in the i650s provide instances of females ruling the state that Njinga might have been able to use, though apparently not with enough force to quiet the doubts of all her rivals and partisans. The historical precedents of ruling queens cited by both Gaeta and Cavazzi tend to reduce their legitimacy. In Gaeta's version, Angola Bumbambula's daughter, Hohoria Angola, was forced to dethrone her brother, Zunduria Angola, because of his cruelty. However, when she took power, she ruled jointly with her husband, who in fact seems to have been a king.54 Cavazzi's slightly different version of the same story has the wicked ruler who is dethroned as female rather than male, thus hardly establishing a positive precedent, and in addition has the victorious couple decline the royal honor, she specifically because of her

52 Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, 12. 5 Ibid. I4-15.

54 Gaeta, Maravigliosa Conversione, I4I.



38 JOHN K. THORNTON

sex, he because of his foreign birth. Instead, they agreed to a compromise to allow their son to rule since he did possess royal blood, with the parents serving as regents.55

Njinga seems to have been acutely conscious of the fact that her sex weakened her claim. She therefore began her rule simply as a regent for her brother's son, the legitimate male heir, who was still a minor and had been entrusted to the 'Jaga' (Imbangala leader) Kaza. Fernao de Sousa, in his first communications with her, in I624, notes that he received letters from Dona Anna, 'Lady of Angola' (senhora de Angola). He distinguished this title from that of queen, no doubt because her nephew, the heir, was still in the hands of Kaza.56 Cavazzi, basing himself on interviews with Njinga conducted in the i 66os, recounts that she had begun as a regent for the young boy of about eight as well, indicating that she made no attempt to manipulate the history of this period nor distort this meaning.57

However, Njinga was not content with the regency, which she probably saw as ultimately a barrier to her obtaining full power. As a result she had her nephew killed and assumed power herself.58 It was this act as much as her manipulation of the royal court slaves or the recruiting of military slaves from her rivals, that led to war and gave both Hari a Kiluanji and Ngola Hari the basis to deny Njinga's claims to the throne.59

If she had ended the potential rivalry of her nephew by killing him, however, she was apparently still not satisfied of her right to rule alone. Perhaps to meet the contentions of her rivals that she could not rule as a woman, Njinga devised a second method of insuring her power. Cavazzi maintained in the i 66os that she married dependent men, who ruled nominally as kings,60 while she exercised the real power. None of the sources of the I63os and -40s confirms this arrangement, though it is certainly not impossible, and it must be said that little information about life in Njinga's court survives in any sources from this period.

These dependent spouses were obviously not sufficiently well accepted as kings for her to continue with the scheme, and as a result Njinga adopted a still more radical method of overcoming the illegitimacy of her sex. At some point in the I 640s Njinga decided to 'become a man'. Some of her apparently bizarre behavior in later life can be explained by this ideological requirement. Njinga's husbands became her 'concubines',61 and she took several at the same time. She required these husbands to dress in women's clothes and to sleep among her maids in waiting. Should they touch these maids sexually they would be instantly killed.62

Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, I0.

56 Fernao de Sousa to Governo, I5 Aug. I624, in Heintze, Fontes, vol. 2, 85. Also see 'LembranSa do estado em que achej a ElRey de Angola...' (Autumn, i624), in ibid. vol. I, I97.

57 Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, i6, and in more detail,

33_4. 58 Fernao de Sousa, 'Rellacao de Dongo', in Heintze, Fontes, vol. I, I99.

5 Ibid. vol. I, i99, and followed by Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, 34, and Gaeta, Maravigliosa Conversione, 205-6.

60 Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, 33, 4I, I24.

61 Italian sources use the unusual masculine forms concubino (plural concubini) as concubina (concubine) is feminine.

62 Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, ' Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, 4I; Gaeta, Maravigliosa Conversione, 2 I8-I9. These observations, made by the Italian Capuchins in the late I650s




Njinga reinforced this maleness by engaging in virile pursuits. She led her troops personally in battle. The Portuguese soldier and chronicler Antonio de Oliveria de Cadornega personally saw her just behind the battle lines in the engagement at Ngolomene a Kaita in i646.63 She equipped a battalion of her ladies in waiting as soldiers and used them as her personal guard as well,64 and she was quite dexterous in the use of arms herself. Cavazzi, observing her at one military parade in i 662 when she was over eighty years of age, was deeply impressed with her mastery of this manly art.65

Njinga's gender change was not simply a personal quirk or a psychological reaction to her illegitimate situation. There were precedents for gender change among powerful women in central Africa, where the distinction between sex as a biological condition and gender as a social condition is made clear in law. In Kongo, for example, women who obtained or were given positions of political power had the right to marry several men and also had the right to dispose of them whenever they saw fit.66 This form of polyandry was only for the upper class and certainly did not occur in other settings.

The various twists of Njinga's coping with the barrier of her female sex, and even the assertions of maleness by which she finally overcame it, demonstrate that, as powerful as Njinga became, she could not simply create the constitutional precedents she needed to establish her power. If the guardians of traditions in Ndongo knew of contradictory historical precedents, or even if fundamental disagreements over exactly what was Ndongo's history provided opportunities to manipulate it, the elite of Ndongo still had some fundamental constitutional beliefs which could not be easily altered, even with uncontested power.

In the end, Njinga ultimately managed to shape her state into a form that tolerated her authority, though surely the fact that she survived all attacks on her and built up a strong base of loyal supporters helped as much as the relevance of the precedents she cited. Although the Imbangala faction of Njinga Mona made a serious attempt to seize power after her death, ultimately forces of the Christian faction led by Joao Guterres Ngola Kanini succeeded in defeating them and the Imbangala principles.67

Ngola Kanini might have faced a potential rival from among Ngola Hari's descendants, who still ruled under Portuguese control, for both lines were derived from junior relatives of the founder.68 But by the i66os Ngola Hari no longer was in a position to enforce the claims of his line, as the Portuguese had decided to support Njinga's desires and not press his case. Indeed the disappointment of Ngola Hari and his successors at the treaty of I656 was such that it eventually led to war between Ngola Hari's successor, Joao Ngola

and i66os, were also recorded by Dutch soldiers who served in her army during the Dutch occupation of Angola, i64i-8; see Olfert Dapper, Naukeurige Beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche Gewester (2nd ed., Amsterdam, i676 [Ist ed., i668]), second pagination, 237. 63 Cadornega, Histdria, vol. I, 405.

64 Mss Araldi, Cavazzi, 'Missione evangelica', vol. A, Book 2, 96. Cadornega mentions her guard battalion but does not describe it as being composed of women, Historia, vol. I, 405. 65 Cavazzi, Istorica Descrizione, Book 6, para 3I.

66 Cavazzi, Istorica Descrizione, Book 2, para 76. 67 The struggle is detailed in Cadornega, Historia, vol. 2, 246-9, 254-6, 295-7. 68 Gaeta, Maravigliosa Conversione, I44-5, to cite the most obviously pro-Njinga

source.



40 JOHN K. THORNTON

Hari, and Portugal in i67I."9 As a result, the question which had been so important in the i65os no longer retained much significance.

The epilogue to the case of Njinga confirms the role of precedent in African constitutional law. Obviously, once Njinga had secured her power and based it on historical precedent, and once she and her successors had defeated those who challenged her claim, she became a historical precedent herself. While Njinga had obviously not overcome the idea that females could not rule in Ndongo during her lifetime, and had to 'become a male' to retain power, her female successors faced little problem in being accepted as rulers.

The combined kingdom of Ndongo and Matamba (a title still in use in I756),70 which she had ruled, had numerous queens in the following century: Njinga's sister Barbara ruled briefly, until i666 after she died, and then after the civil war that defeated Njinga Mona's claims, she had two male successors, Joao Guterres Ngola Kanini and his son Francisco (i669-8I). But in i68i, Veronica I became queen, followed by a son in I7 i6,71 and then by Ana II (died I744), Veronica II (crowned 1756) and Ana III (died in I767). In the period of I04 years that followed Njinga's death in I663, queens ruled for at least eighty of them. All these rulers bore the surname Guterres, suggesting that the line founded by Francisco Guterres Ngola Kanini continued in power as well.72 Indeed there are few examples in history of a country ruled so consistently by a queen as Matamba in the century after Njinga.

The case of Queen Njinga shows us the complexity of the issue of legitimacy in central Africa. African constitutions, like other laws, were not fixed, eternal entities but rather grounded in complex and often contradictory webs of precedent. This precedent, and the historical narratives that expressed and supported it, was itself an ambiguous and highly manipulated body of material, answering the competing demands of those who fought over power. Historians who wish to use this material must obviously be aware of these issues if they hope to use it to establish history as well as law.

SUMMARY

Queen Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba has recently been viewed as a usurper of the throne, largely because some contemporary documents describe her as such. But the issue of legitimacy to rule in Ndongo was a complex one, based not on a fixed constitution but a set of contradictory historical precedents which were cited to establish authority. Njinga managed to find such precedents to support her claims, which were further reinforced by her control of the chief military officials of the country. In so doing, she was able to establish her legitimacy and even became a precedent for female rule in the years that followed her death.

69 The crisis is traced in Cadornega, Historia, vol. 2, 298-300, 3I4-29.

70 The title was so used in a formal document of Queen Ver6nica II: Biblioteca da

Universidade de Coimbra, Mss 2529, f. 64; Veronica statement, undated, cited and quoted in Fernando Campos, 'A data da morte da Rainha Jinga D. Ver6nica I', Africa

(SAo Paulo), IV (i981), 79-I04; V (I982), I72-204; VI (I983), 89-I28, at iv, 86.

71 The date of her death was given by Giuseppe Monari da Modena, who helped in the

funeral; see Archivio de Propaganda Fide, Scritture Originale nel Congregazione Generale, vol. 64I, ff. 129-33. 72 Campos, 'Data da morte', IV, 79-90.



Documents

Legitimacy and Political Power - Queen Njinga, 1624-1663 (John Thornton)