'Njinga of Angola: Africa's Warrior Queen'

H-War Ivey on Heywood, 'Njinga of Angola: Africa's Warrior Queen'

Review published on Thursday, July 23, 2020

Linda M. Heywood. Njinga of Angola: Africa's Warrior Queen. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017. Illustrations. 320 pp. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-674-97182-0.

Reviewed by Jacob Ivey (Florida Institute of Technology)Published on H-War (July, 2020) Commissioned by Margaret Sankey (Air University)

Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=55162

Linda M. Heywood has produced the first comprehensive biography of Njinga of Ndongo, queen of one of the largest kingdoms in what is today modern Angola. Njinga ruled from 1624 to 1663 and helped to define one of the critical periods of Portuguese expansion in central Africa in the early modern era. Heywood contends that Njinga’s legacy centers on her attempts to preserve her kingdom from foreign encroachment while exhibiting unrivaled skill in political and religious diplomacy that allowed her to make the Dutch East India Company an ally while also becoming a correspondent with the pope. Her importance, according to Heywood, as “the most successful of the African rulers in resisting the Portuguese,” aids her legacy in the Americas where her story accompanied some of the first slaves who arrived in the American colonies. Heywood, however, desires to move beyond this traditional view of Angola’s historical connection to conquest and the slave trade and instead hopes to raise Njinga to the same level of inquiry as other iconic monarchs of the early modern period, including Elizabeth I and Catherine the Great, highlighting a “full and complex life ... focusing on themes of power, leadership, gender, and spirituality” (p. 3).

Njinga was born into a world transformed by colonial expansion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with the Portuguese using the two-pronged tactic of division and religious penetration. Heywood provides an intricate understanding of the sheer complexity of the geopolitical and social situation surrounding Portuguese Angola and the kingdom of Ndongo. Among the Mbundu of Ndongo, there was a multifaceted system of shared authority that included the political, economic, and spiritual. This tripartite system of power remains one of the most consistent themes of the book, with Njinga manipulating this precarious balance in her near half-century of rule. Njinga, throughout her career, seemed to propel herself forward against all adversaries, overcoming supreme difficulties. From the murder of her son and forced sterilization by her brother before ascending to the throne, to conflict with a puppet ruler of Ndongo appointed by the Portuguese, to negotiations for Dutch aid in the partial ousting of the Portuguese from her territory, to the establishment of a Capuchin mission in her kingdom along with direct lines of communication with the pope, Njinga’s essential feature was adaptability. One of the most defining moments of this adaptability followed her first defeat by the Portuguese, which forced her to flee her kingdom. Joining with the Imbangala, a disorganized group of mercenaries and potential cannibals, Njinga engrossed herself in the martial traditions and rituals of the ijila, the laws and rituals that defined Imbangala society. Njinga eventually mimicked Tembo a Ndumbo, a daughter of the original leaders of the Imbangala, in a ritual involving pounding the flesh of a child into a mortar that was then used to create an oil spread all over the body. This ritual “de- gendered her, transforming her psychologically into ‘a man, soldier, and warrior’” while becoming a “model for her future political life ... whose reputation for carnage, cruelty, and cannibalism made

Yet despite Njinga’s reputation for carnage and cruelty, Heywood presents her spiritualism as her most intriguing legacy. After reestablishing her kingdom under the combined auspices of Ndongo and Matamba, Njinga used the last decade of her rule to transform her state into a Christian kingdom through nothing short of a social revolution. Heywood argues that Njinga saw spiritualism as a vital part of her leadership style, typically combining military alliances with religious diplomacy. The most famous example involved her attempts to seek an alliance with the Catholic Church through the Capuchin missionaries, who became her political intermediaries. It is this turn toward the church and a move away from the Imbangala traditions that provide some sophisticated insight into Njinga’s motivation and character. One of the main catalysts for this social revolution was the arrival of a crucifix from one of Njinga’s key advisors, who claimed it appeared to him in a dream and demanded to be taken to the queen. When presented with the crucifix and story of the dream, Njinga shouted, “God searches for me and comes in person to find me” and moved the crucifix into the palace. Heywood rightly acknowledges the fantastic nature of this story but also highlights that it would have made “negations and conversions far more palatable to her counselors and captain” (p. 186). It is this kind of religious negotiation that highlights the social and cultural complexity of this period, and the transitory nature of African society that was in many ways not dictated by European influence but part of an intricate mix of indigenous agency and social revolution.

The issue of slavery remains another example of this complexity during this period. Heywood argues that the “complex social structure that characterized Ndongo society offers insight into how the slave trade undermined Ndongo’s independence” as the slave trade became a defining feature of the relationship with the Portuguese (p. 39). Heywood estimates that some fifty thousand slaves were sent to the Americas from Angola between 1575 and 1578, with an additional fifty-two thousand from 1579 to 1592, the majority coming from Ndongo. Many of these slaves were captured by the Portuguese during this period. However, many of Ndongo’s kijikos, or serfs, became plantation slaves in Angola and the Americas, much to the consternation of Ndongo. The issue of slavery was more accurately part of a series of “trade wars” instead of slave raids by the Portuguese. Heywood shows that Njinga’s continued use of slaves and the slave trade as a political and economic weapon underpins the broader complexity of African relationships with the slave trade during this period.

As a biography, Heywood’s account remains expectedly fixated on Njinga and the figures surrounding her. However, this focus leaves many questions about the people whose lives were upended by this near-century of conflict. This gap is primarily the result of sources, but there are instances of human interaction and personal moments that leave the reader wanting more. In 1620, when the Portuguese governor hosted a spectacle commemorating his military victory over Ngola Mbande (Njinga’s brother), a dwarf recently captured in the conflict was at the center of the display. Heywood rightly observes that there is little difficulty in imagining “how humiliating this and other such spectacles of African subservience must have been to the thousands of Mbundus who witnessed or heard about them” (p. 49). However, such commentary is lacking in a similar humiliating situation involving Njinga. In an early role as emissary for Ndongo, to avoid the indignity of sitting on the floor while meeting the Portuguese governor, Njinga used one of her servants as a human chair during the long hours of negotiation. While creating an ingenious means of avoiding insult and highlighting her power, when the meeting concluded, an onlooker reminded Njinga that she had left her servant on the floor. Njinga claimed she “had not forgotten the attendant at all” but an “envoy of her

Citation: H-Net Reviews. Ivey on Heywood, 'Njinga of Angola: Africa's Warrior Queen'. H-War. 07-23-2020. https://networks.h-net.org/node/12840/reviews/6276589/ivey-heywood-njinga-angola-africas-warrior-queen Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-War status ... should never have to sit on the same chair twice—after all, she remarked, she had many others just like it” (p. 62). This dismissal is not met with commentary on the humiliation felt by the servant but instead seen as a moment of political leverage and nothing more. The same can be said for the Imbangala ritual that propelled Njinga’s reemergence from exile. The tragedy of her past meant she did not have a child of her own to sacrifice during the ritual. Instead, Njinga “took an infant from one of her female concubines” while requiring “perspective followers to perform the same act before allowing them to join her band” (p. 125). Again, Heywood makes no other comments on the fate of these other infants or their families.

This potential contradiction does reveal, however, an underying theme of Heywood’s book. Njinga was singular to her story and those around her were secondary players in the narrative. Njinga was a ruler, queen, and noble. She, like the European monarchs of her day, was central to the story of her rule. She was powerful, committed, and brilliant in her manipulation of the situations and people around her. Whether taking up Christian baptism as a diplomatic inroad, participating in international alliances to undermine the Portuguese, or implementing other central African leadership styles and rituals to reestablish her power base, Njinga’s rule is rightly on par with the other great monarchs that define the Western tradition. She “no longer represents the other, but a powerful woman with few contemporary equals” (p. 257). Heywood’s book is a necessary introduction to this pivotal figure in African and world history. For students in an undergraduate course or even the general public, it provides a detailed, readable, and insightful examination of one of the fascinating African leaders of the period. For scholars of central and southern Africa, it should provide the foundation for a wealth of future research and analysis about this warrior queen who defined her era.

Citation: Jacob Ivey. Review of Heywood, Linda M., Njinga of Angola: Africa's Warrior Queen. H- War, H-Net Reviews. July, 2020. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55162

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.