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.
In the 17th century there were a number of theories proposed by missionaries and geographers that connected these two groups to other marauding groups operating as far afield as Somalia, Angola and Sierra Leone and ultimately to some great "Jaga homeland" somewhere in central Africa. While more recent scholarship dismissed these earlier claims, in the 1960 a number of scholars proposed that oral traditions of the Lunda Empire, when compared with those of some Angolan groups, suggested that the Jaga invasion of Kongo and the Jagas of Angola were in fact groups of conquerors fleeing from Lunda in the 16th century.
In 1972 Joseph C. Miller presented a review of the available evidence and argued that the group that invaded Kongo was completely distinct from the group that invaded Angola, so that the second group should properly be called "Imbangala". This distinction is now widely accepted among scholars operating in this field. The invaders of Kongo are thought to have originated from a province of Mwene Muji. [1] [2] : 32–33
The Portuguese first learned about a people they called "jagas" during Kongo's 1556 war with the Mbundu kingdom of Ndongo. [3] Among Ndongo's regular forces were mercenary warriors of the Yaka ethnic group. The Yaka had a reputation for ferocity and were said to come from the far interior. They inhabited the middle reaches of the Kwango valley, making them the eastern neighbors to the Mbundu and BaKongo. [4] These particular "jagas" were constant victims of the Kongo slave trade and eventually invaded their western neighbor in 1568. This forced the Portuguese to intervene with some 600 matchlockmen on behalf of then king Alvaro I. [5] Though forced completely out of Kongo by the mid-1570s, they continued to be a force on the border. They later supplied many mercenary troops to Kongo during its civil war.
The Portuguese intervention in the war with the Jaga increased their power in the Kingdom of Kongo. This led to increased trade in favor of Portugal and a seat for priests on the Kongo electoral council. [6]
The Portuguese also encountered another fierce warrior people, this time further south beyond the Kwanza River. The actual name of these people was Imbangala. The origins of these people is still debated, but they are also believed to have immigrated from the Lunda Empire, rejecting that state's political changes. The Imbangala were known to be notoriously cruel and also ritually cannibalistic. [7] They were used to good effect as mercenary elements in the Portuguese army during its conquest of Angola. Once introduced into central Angola, the Imbangala settled there, forming the kingdom of Kasanje on the Kwango River. [8]
Nzinga Ana de Sousa Mbande, Nzinga 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 was an early-modern African state located in the highlands between the Lukala and Kwanza Rivers, in what is now Angola.
The Yaka are an African ethnic group found in southwestern Democratic Republic of the Congo, with Angola border to their west. They number about 300,000 and are related to the Suku people. They live in the forest and savanna region between the Kwango River and the Wamba River. They speak the Yaka language.
Álvaro I Nimi a Lukeni lua Mvemba was a Manikongo, or king of Kongo, from 1568 to 1587, and the founder of the Kwilu dynasty.
The Imbangala or Mbangala were divided groups of warriors and marauders who worked as hired mercenaries in 17th-century Angola and later founded the Kasanje Kingdom.
The Kingdom of Kongo was a kingdom in Central Africa. It was located in present-day northern Angola, the western portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Southern of Gabon and the Republic of the Congo. At its greatest extent it reached from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Kwango River in the east, and from the Congo River in the north to the Kwanza River in the south. The kingdom consisted of several core provinces ruled by the Manikongo, the Portuguese version of the Kongo title Mwene Kongo, meaning "lord or ruler of the Kongo kingdom", but its sphere of influence extended to neighbouring kingdoms, such as Ngoyo, Kakongo, Loango, Ndongo, and Matamba, the latter two located in what is Angola today.
The Kingdom of Matamba (pre-1550–1744) 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.
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.
King João I was the 5th ManiKongo of the Kingdom of Kongo between 1470 and 1509. He voluntarily converted to Roman Catholicism. He was baptized on 3 May 1491 and took the Christian name of João. Soon after, ManiKongo Nzinga-a-Nkuwu João I abandoned the new faith for a number of reasons, one of them being the Roman Catholic Church's requirement of monogamy. Politically, he could not afford to abandon polygamy and embrace monogamy, a cultural shift that the king could not contemplate as power in Kongo was elective, rather than hereditary as in Europe; as Kongo culture followed a matrilineality structure, where the elder son of the king is not automatically the next king.
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 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.
Bernardo I of Kongo was a 16th-century manikongo (ruler) of the Kingdom of Kongo, a region encompassing areas in 21st-century Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He came to power after murdering his half-brother Afonso II who was less well-disposed toward the Portuguese.
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.
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.
Mwene Muji was a polity around Lake Mai-Ndombe in the Congo Basin. It was of the Nunu people and the Ntote. The first written record of Mwene Muji came in 1591 by Italian humanist Filippo Pigafetta. It entered a severe decline in the 19th century and was surpassed by the Boma Kingdom, until Belgian conquest. Its 'empire' status is pending on further archaeological research.
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