Imbangala

The Imbangala or Mbangala were 17th century groups of Angolan warriors and marauders, often confused with the Jaga.

Origins

In 1568 a group of maurading warriors known as "Jagas" invaded the kingdom of Kongo, apparently from the east, and then a few years later, Portuguese colonizers in Angola encountered other groups they called "Jagas". In the seventeenth century there were a number of theories proposed by missionaries and geographers that connected these two groups to other maurading 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 1960s a number 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 sixteenth century.

In 1972, Joseph C. Miller successfully argued by presenting an overview of all the evidence, that the group that invaded Kongo was completely distinct from the group invading Angola, and that the second group should properly be called "Imbangala". This distinction is now very widely accepted by all scholars operating in this field.

There is, however continued disagreement about the origins of both groups. Some continue to argue, as Miller originally did, that the Imbangala came from Lunda, relying on modern traditions to support them. Others, however, have opted for a more local, Angola origin in the great central highlands (or Bihe Plateau) section of the modern state, or in the coastal regions that lay just to the west of the highlands. The first eyewitness account of the Imbangala, written by an English sailor named Andrew Battell, who lived with them for 16 months in around 1600-1601, places them firmly in the coastal regions and highlands of modern day 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.

Imbangala and the Portuguese

The Portuguese took an interest in the Imbangala about the time that Battell first lived with them. In fact, Battell went to their country in company with Portuguese merchants who were buying up their war captives to sell as slaves. At the time of their contact, the Imbangala were acting as mauraders whose primary interest seemed to be pillage the country, especially in order to obtain large quantities of palm wine, which they produced by a wasteful method of chopping the tree down and tapping out its fermented contents over a period of a few months. In addition, the Imbangala did not permit its female members to give birth, alledgedly exposing all the children born in their kilombo (Portuguese quilombo)or armed camp. Instead, they replenished their numbers by capturing adolescents and forcing them to serve in their army. In methods reminiscent of modern day child soldier recruitment, the young captives were often forced to kill and eat people, consumed considerable alcohol, and could not be admitted to full membership until they had killed an enemy in combat. Cannibalism, ritual human sacrifice and torture were all featured in what seventeenth century observers called the "quixilla laws" (from Kimbundu kixila, or prohibition) by which the Imbangala were said to live.

Their military capacity and ruthlessness made them appealing 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 professed disgust at their customs, Portuguese governors of Luanda sometimes hired the Imbangala for their campaigns, beginning with Bento Banha Cardoso in 1615, but most notably following Luis Mendes de Vasconcelos's 1618 assault on Ndongo. Mendes de Vasconcelos operated with three distinct bands of Imbangala, but soon found that they were not disciplined to serve the Portuguese. Kasanje's band, in particular, broke free of Portuguese control and began a long campaign of pillage that eventually would establish them the Baixa de Cassange region of modern Angola along the Kwango River. This band would become the modern Angolan ethnicity that calls itself Imbangala (and ceased the militant customs of its predecessors in the late seventeenth century).

Another band, Kaza, actually joined up with Ndongo and opposed the Portuguese, though it would eventually betray 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 only 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.

Later Fate

Other bands were integrated into the Portuguese army, serving as auxiliary soldiers, under their own commanders and cantoned within the Portuguese territory. As the seventeenth century wore on, these and other bands were either annihilated by one or another of the political states or absorbed into the states formed by Njinga in Matamba or by Kansanje. South of the Kwanza, however, 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 eighteenth century, cannibalism was restricted to ritual and sometimes only to symbolic occasions (for example in the nineteenth century Imbangala groups in the central highlands still practices a ritual know as "eating the old man").

External links

• Angolan Origins of Melungeons in 17th Century Virginia
• Angolan Kingdoms