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The Imbangala or Mbangala were divided groups of warriors and marauders who worked as hired mercenaries in 17th-century Angola [1] and later founded the Kasanje Kingdom.
The Imbangala were people, possibly from Central Africa, who appeared in Angola during the early 17th century. Their origins are still debated. There is general agreement that they were not the same Jagas that attacked the Kingdom of Kongo during the reign of Alvaro I. [1]
In the 1960s, Jan Vansina and David Birmingham hypothesized that the oral traditions of the Lunda Empire suggested that both groups of Jaga marauders originated in the Lunda Empire (present-day Democratric Republic of Congo and Zambia) under leader Kinguri and had fled 1550 and 1612. [1] Another theory is that the Imbangala were a local people of southern Angola originating from the Bie Plateau or the coastal regions west of the highlands. [1]
The first witness account of the Imbangala, written by an English sailor named Andrew Battell, who lived with them for 16 months around 1600–1601, places them firmly in the coastal regions and highlands of modern Angola, just south of the Kwanza River. Their leaders told Battell that they had come from a place called Elembe and that they had originated from a "page" in its army. Battell's story was published by Samuel Purchas partially in 1614 and fully in 1625.
Battell went to their country with Portuguese merchants buying their war captives to sell as slaves. At this time the Imbangala were marauders whose primary interest seemed to be pillaging the country, especially to obtain large quantities of palm wine, which they produced by a wasteful method of chopping down trees and tapping their fermented contents over a few months.
The Imbangala did not permit female members to give birth in their kilombo (Portuguese quilombo ), or armed camp. Instead, they replenished their numbers by capturing adolescents and forcing them to serve in their army. This social structure made the Imbangala warbands ideal slavers, as non-male prisoners had little use in their society and as such could be easily sold to the Portuguese. [1]
The Imbangala were a fully militarized society based entirely on initiation rites as opposed to the customary kinship rites of most African ethnic groups. To keep kinship from replacing initiation, all children born inside a kilombo (village) were killed. Women were allowed to leave the kilombo to have their children, but when they returned, the child was not considered an Imbangala until undergoing initiation. In almost Spartan-like program, children were trained daily in group and individual combat. [2]
During training, they wore a collar that could not be removed, even after initiation, until they had killed a man in battle. Aside from infanticide rituals, the Imbangala covered themselves with ointment called maji a samba believed to confer invulnerability as long as the soldier followed strict set of yijila (codes), which required the infanticide, cannibalism and an absolute absence of cowardice. [2]
According to Battell, who lived among them for more than a year, they moved every few months to a new place, attacking the inhabitants and killing or enslaving everybody who could not escape in time. [3] He writes that they ate killed enemies as well as their own fighters if they lacked courage: "those that are faint-hearted, and turn their backs to the enemy, are presently condemned and killed for cowards, and their bodies eaten." [4] Boys had to prove their worth by killing an enemy in order to be accepted among the men – those who tried to run away were killed and eaten too. [5] Battell also reports of ritual human sacrifices held before large battles and other major enterprises. During these rituals, captured enemies were killed together with cows, goats, and dogs, and the flesh of all the victims was eaten together. [6]
Imbangala fighting men were known as ngunza (singular: gonzo) and were divided into twelve squadrons, each led by a captain called a musungo. These twelve squadrons were part of a kilombo, a temporarily-fortified town surrounded by a wooden palisade. Each kilombo had twelve gates for the twelve squadrons that formed the total fighting force. [2] The Imbangala army took the open field or any battlefield away from their fortifications in a three-prong formation similar to the famous Zulu "bull horn" formation. The Imbangala attacked with a right horn (mutanda), left horn (muya) and vanguard (muta ita) in the center. Unlike the Zulu, the Imbangala fought with the same weapons as their enemies, including bows, knives and swords. Their primary weapon was the war club or hatchet. [7]
The military capacity and ruthlessness of the Imbangala appealed to Portuguese colonists in Angola, who had been fought to a standstill in their war against the Angolan kingdom of Ndongo during the first period of colonial rule (1575–1599). Despite professing disgust at Imbangala customs, Portuguese governors of Luanda sometimes hired them for their campaigns, beginning with Bento Banha Cardoso in 1615 but most notably after Luis Mendes de Vasconcelos's 1618 assault on Ndongo. Álvaro II of Kongo objected to the first of these alliances, complaining that the Imbangala "were 'eating' many of his subjects", but the Portuguese ignored him. [8]
Mendes de Vasconcelos operated with three bands of Imbangala but soon found that they were not disciplined enough to serve the Portuguese. Kasanje's band, in particular, broke free of Portuguese control and began a long campaign of pillage that eventually established them in the Baixa de Cassange region of modern Angola along the Kwango River. The band became the modern Angolan ethnicity that calls itself Imbangala (and ceased the militant customs of its predecessors in the late 17th century).
Another band, Kaza, joined Ndongo and opposed the Portuguese before betraying Ndongo's Queen Njinga Mbande in 1629, thus frustrating that queen's attempt to preserve Ndongo's independence from a base on islands in the Kwanza River. After Njinga's short-lived attempt to join with Kasanje in 1629–30, she went to Matamba and there formed her own (or joined with another) Imbangala band led by a man known as "Njinga Mona" (Njinga's son). Though reported to be an Imbangala herself (supposedly taking an initiation rite that involved pounding up a baby in a grain mortar), Njinga probably never really became one.
Other bands were integrated into the Portuguese army serving as auxiliary soldiers, under their commanders and cantoned within the Portuguese territory. As the 17th century wore on, they and other bands were annihilated by one or another of the political states, such as the one formed by Njinga in Matamba. One rogue group of Imbangala set down roots and formed the Kasanje Kingdom.
South of the Kwanza, in the original homeland of the Imbangala, they continued operating much as before for a least another half a century, but even there, they gradually formed partnerships with existing political entities such as Bihe (Viye), Huambo (Wambu) or Bailundu (Mbailundu). In all these areas, their customs tended to moderate in the 18th century, cannibalism was restricted to ritual and sometimes only to symbolic occasions (for example, in the 19th century, Imbangala groups in the central highlands still practiced a ritual known as "eating the old man").
Nzinga Ana de Sousa Mbande, Nzhinga was a southwest African ruler who ruled as queen of the Ambundu Kingdoms of Ndongo (1624–1663) and Matamba (1631–1663), located in present-day northern Angola. Born into the ruling family of Ndongo, her grandfather Ngola Kilombo Kia Kasenda was the king of Ndongo.
Central Africa is a subregion of the African continent comprising various countries according to different definitions. Middle Africa is an analogous term used by the United Nations in its geoscheme for Africa and consists of the following countries: Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and São Tomé and Príncipe. The United Nations Office for Central Africa also includes Burundi and Rwanda in the region, which are considered part of East Africa in the geoscheme. These eleven countries are members of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS). Six of those countries are also members of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) and share a common currency, the Central African CFA franc.
The Kingdom of Ndongo, 1515-1671, was an early-modern African state located in the highlands between the Lukala and Kwanza Rivers, in what is now Angola.
The Kingdom of Matamba (1631–1744) was an African state located in what is now the Baixa de Cassange region of Malanje Province of modern-day Angola. Joined to the Kingdom of Ndongo by Queen Nzinga in 1631, the state had many male and female rulers. It was a powerful kingdom that long resisted Portuguese colonisation attempts, but was integrated into Portuguese Angola in the late nineteenth century.
Mussasa was a 17th-century Imbangala Jagas queen.
Verónica Guterres Kangala Kingwanda was the ruler of the joint kingdom of Ndongo and Matamba, 1681–1721.
The Ambundu or Mbundu (Mbundu: Ambundu or Akwambundu, singular: Mumbundu are a Bantu people who live on a high plateau in present-day Angola just north of the Kwanza River. The Ambundu speak Kimbundu, and most also speak the official language of the country, Portuguese. They are the second biggest ethnic group in the country and make up 25% of the total population of Angola.
The Lunda are a Bantu ethnic group that originated in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo along the Kalanyi River and formed the Kingdom of Lunda in the 17th century under their ruler, Mwata Yamvo or Mwaant Yav, with their capital at Musumba. From there they spread widely through Katanga and into Eastern Angola, north-western Zambia and the Luapula valley of Zambia.
The Battle of Kombi was a decisive battle in the war between Ndongo-Matamba and Portugal during the Dutch period of Angolan history.
The precolonial history of Angola lasted until Portugal annexed the territory as a colony in 1655.
The colonial history of Angola is usually considered to run from the appearance of the Portuguese under Diogo Cão in 1482 (Congo) or 1484 until the independence of Angola in November 1975. Settlement did not begin until Novais's establishment of São Paulo de Loanda (Luanda) in 1575, however, and the Portuguese government only formally incorporated Angola as a colony in 1655 or on May 12, 1886.
The Kasanje Kingdom (1620–1910), also known as the Jaga Kingdom, was a Central African state. It was formed in 1620 by a mercenary band of Imbangala, which had deserted the Portuguese ranks. The state gets its name from the leader of the band, Kasanje, who settled his followers on the upper Kwango River. The Kasanje people were ruled by the Jaga, a king who was elected from among the three clans who founded the kingdom.
The Kasanze Kingdom, also known as Kasanye, was a pre-colonial Central West African state in what is today Angola.
The Jaga or Jagas were terms applied by the Portuguese to tribes such as Yaka, Suku, Teke, Luba, Kuba and Hungaan invading bands of African warriors east and south of the kingdom of Kongo. The use of the phrase took on different connotations depending on where it was applied. There were two groups of people, both known as fierce warriors, who were dubbed jagas or the jaga. Unbeknownst to the Portuguese who encountered these warriors, the two groups were practically unrelated.
The Battle of Katole was a military engagement between forces of Portuguese Angola and the Kingdom of Matamba. The battle took place on 4 September 1681 at Katole in what is today Angola. It was one of the largest military engagements anywhere in the world during the 17th century.
The Portuguese colony of Angola was founded in 1575 with the arrival of Paulo Dias de Novais with a hundred families of colonists and four hundred soldiers. Luanda was granted the status of city in 1605. The fortified Portuguese towns of Luanda and Benguela.
Andrew Battel, was an English traveler. His account of his long stay in Portuguese captivity in Angola, and his travels in the region are essential primary sources for the history of that region, particularly for his early account of the Imbangala and his detailed description of Loango.
The Battle of Mbumbi was a military engagement between forces of Portuguese Angola and the Kingdom of Kongo in 1622. Although the Portuguese were victorious, the battle served as the impetus for the Kingdom of Kongo to expel the Portuguese from their territory.
The Battle of Pungo Andongo, also known as the siege of Pungo Andongo was a military engagement in what is today Angola between Portugal and the Kingdom of Ndongo whose capital, Pungo Andongo, also known as Pedras Negras, was besieged. After a nine-month encirclement, the capital was taken by storm, plundered and occupied by the Portuguese.
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