The Mbundu and Neighbouring Peoples Op Central Angola
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THE MBUNDU AND NEIGHBOURING PEOPLES OP CENTRAL ANGOLA UNDER THE INFLUENCE OP PORTUGUESE TRADE AND CONQUEST 1482 - 1790 b y David Birmingham Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Oriental and African Studies University of London 1964 ProQuest Number: 11015952 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 11015952 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS The two major Bantu political groupings in West Central Africa centre on the Kongo kingdom and on the Luba-Lunda states* To the south of Kongo and east of Lunda live the Mbundu people who, from the end of the fifteenth century, developed contacts with the Portuguese and event ually became the main link between Western Bantu Africa and Europe* Dur ing most of the sixteenth century this relationship was based on trade in slaves. The benefits of this trade enabled the Mbundu to consolidate the small state of Ndongo, on the north side of the Kwanza River, into a moderately powerful kingdom. In the mid-sixteenth century Ndongo pros perity caused a migrant Lunda group called the Imbangala, who had camped on the eastern border of Mbundu country, to attack the Mbundu and make direct contact with the Portuguese. From 1575 the Portuguese embarked on a programme of territorial con quest. This continued through most of the seventeenth century, the great period of the Angolan Wars. The Portuguese suffered many set-backs, the lowest ebb being from 1641 to 1648 when the Dutch temporarily captured and held Luanda* By 1671, however, the independent Mbundu monarch in Ndongo had been eradicated. Thereafter the main African trading states of the area were Matamba and Kasanje on the Kwango River. After the wars the Luanda slave trade declined, North European competition from Loango and Portuguese competition from Benguela caused a serious depression in Mbundu trade during most of the eighteenth century. Only after 1790 were there signs of a revival. 4. CONTENTS BfigP, Abstract of the Thesis. 3 Contents. 4 Preface. 7 Chapter One The Bantu of West Central Africa. 17 The setting in which the Mbundu live; the origins and description of Kongo; the Luba civilization; the foundation of the Lunda empire; the origins of Ndongo. Chapter Two The Opening of the Atlantic Slave 49 Trade. 1482-1565 The Portuguese exploration of Kongo and the Mbundu country; the early slave trade from Mpinda and Luanda. Chapter Three The Beginning of the Portuguese Conquest 34 of Ndongo. 1565-1603 The colonising expedition of 1575; the outbreak of war with the Mbundu; the Portuguese conquest of the lower Kwanza and of the mythical silver mines. Chapter Pour The Lunda-Imbangala Invasion of Ndongo. 121 c. 1550-1603 The Lunda migration away from Luba invaders; their arrival on the periphery of Portuguese slave trading activity and attempts to participate in that trade. 5. page Chapter Five The Expulsion of the Ngola from Mongo. 1605-1641 145 The Portuguese capture of the Ugola's capital and attempts to install a new Mbundu dynasty; migrations away from the Portuguese front. Chapter Six The final destruction of Ndongo. 1641-1684 188 The Dutch interlude in Luanda; Portuguese determination to establish a firmer hold on the Mbundu country; the growth of the upper Kwango states of Matamba and Kasanje; the overthrow of the * puppet dynasty1 of Ngola Ayre. Chapter Seven The Decline of the Mbundu Slave Trade. 1684-1790 256 Slave trade competition from Benguela and Loango; the growth of the Lunda empire; attacks on the barrier states of the Kwango River; decline of Luanda and the Mbundu trade routes. Bibliography. 282 Map of Vest Central Africa. Map of Central Angola. 6. F | I [j i i i PREFACE This thesis is an attempt to look at the history of Angola as a chapter of African history rather than as an episode in the history of Portuguese imperial expansion. The records of European activity in Angola form an important part of the material used, hut this material has been employed chiefly to cast light on tie older established inhabi tants. Much that could have been said about Portuguese policies and achievements has been left out on the grounds that although interesting and relevant to the European settlers, it did not particularly concern the Mbundu. The second kind of material used in this study is the oral tradi tions of the Mbundu and other Bantu whose history is linked with theirs. By drawing together oral history, which only has a relative chronology, and the history of European activities, in which each event bears a date, a much fuller picture can be gained than by using either separately. On this basis a short history of the Mbundu from 1482 to 1790 has been written, and an attempt has been made to link this with the wider history of the Bantu in West Central Africa. The Mbundu have been chosen as the focus of attention partly be cause of their relationship to several larger Bantu groups, and partly because of the continuity of their contact with the world outside Africa. A more detailed history of Kongo in the sixteenth century or of the Ovimbundu in the eighteenth would have been possible, but the Mbundu played an important if fluctuating role throughout the first three centuries of European contact with West Central Africa. The neighbours of the Bundu who hae been included are the Ndembu of southern Kongo, the Jinga of Matamba, the Imbangala of Kasanje, and the heterogeneous peoples of the south bank of the Kwanza River. All these peoples con tain a strong element of Mbundu, many of them having been driven out of the central Mbundu areas by the Portuguese. The Mbundu historical traditions used are those collected by Cavazsi in the 1660's and by Haveaux in the 1940's.^ Although the for mer are traditions collected before the complete subjection of the Mbundu by the Portuguese, they may have been obtained from informants who had left the Mbundu kingdom of Ndongo to settle in Matamba, further removed from the depredations of slave traders. The Mbundu traditions published by Haveaux were collected among the Pende, a people who were subjects of the IJgola, or king of the Mbundu,until the mid-seventeenth century. They then left Ndongo and migrated right out of the area of the slave trade to settle on the middle Kasai, near its junction with the Tshikapa. By escaping from Portuguese domination the Pende have preserved their traditions of origin and these can be compared both with the traditions collected by Cavazzi three hundred years earlier, and with the written records of Portuguese activity. ‘G. A. Cavazzi de Montecuccolo: Istorica Descrizione de tre regni Congo Matamba et Angola. Bologna 1687. G. L. Haveaux: .La tradition historique des Bapende Orientaux. Bruxelles, 1954. The history of the Mbundu was deeply affected by an invading people from the east called the Imbangala. Two versions of the tradi tions of the Imbangala have been used. The first was collected by Neves in 1850 while on a military expedition to the Imbangala state of Kasanje on the upper Kwango.1 The second versinn was published by 2 Henrique Dias de Carvalho about 1898. He probably collected the material during his expedition to Lunda in the 18801 s. In the process of linking the history of the Mbundu with that of Kongo, Lunda and Luba, a number of traditions of these latter peoples have been used. For Kongo the most important sources are two documents of the 1620’s written by Portuguese clerics who worked in Kongo and re- corded the oral traditions. These can be supplemented by the accounts of Montesarchio and Gallo, two Capuchins who were in Kongo in the late 4 seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The traditions of the 5 6 Lunda were recorded by Pogge in 1875, by Carvalho in 1884-1888 and 7 lastly and most fully by Duysters in 1925-1927. Finally some of the ^A. R. Neves: Memoria da Expedi^o de Cassange em 1850. Lisbon 1854. p H. D. de Carvalho: 0 Jagado de Cassange, Lisbon ?1898 (or 1890). •z ^ Anonymous: Historia do Reino de Congo c. 1620. In Felner: Angola, Lisbon 1953 and.Letter from a priest to Manuel Rodrigues dated Kongo 1624. In Paiva Manso: Historia do Congo, Lisbon 1877. 4 Jerome de Montesarchio cited in Cuvelier: L'Ancien Royaume de Congo, Bruxelles 1946 and Bernardo de Gallo cited in Jadin; Le Congo et la secte des Antoniens, Rome 1961. 5 Pogge: I'm Reich des Muata Jamvo, Berlin 1880. ^E. D. de Carvalho: Expedi^So ao Huatianvua. Vol. entitled Ethnographia et Historia tradicional da Lunda, Lisbon 1390. 'L. Duysters: Histoire des Aluunda, Bruxelles, 1958. numerous and complex traditions of the Luba peoples were collected by Verhulpen.^* In addition to these historical traditions minor references have been made to recent archaeological and linguistic re search. For the written records, Angola is extremely well endowed with collections of published documents. Among the earliest are the works 2 of Lopes de Lima in 1846 and Paiva Manso in 1877.