There's Always a Seat for Queen Nzinga

The warrior queen Nzinga used wily tactics to maintain her kingdom's independence during colonization. Born in the Ndongo Kingdom, Nzinga staged a coup, harbored runaway slaves, and kept a harem of men. Tune in to learn more about queen Nzinga.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm far A Dowdy and I'm DeLine Choker Boarding and
today's subject is a warrior and a queen. Her name
is Dinga of Dongo and the Tamba, And even though

(00:24):
she's considered one of the best documented rulers of her
era in Africa, probably many of you, like us, hadn't
ever heard of her before. I mean, have you heard
of her? I had not to know, and I first
heard of her on a website for historical Halloween costumes.
So that's not really um, I don't know where you'd
expect that history resource for your research. I'm skeptical now.

(00:48):
It's not where you'd expect to first hear about a
historical figure like this. But she was there, tucked in
with these more familiar names, people like Queen Victoria, Cleopatra,
people who you might actually go out and see somebody
dressed as them for Halloween. But she's a pretty amazing ruler,
and not just because she would throw a sword around

(01:08):
her neck and enter battle well into her sixties. She's
most impressive for her ability to maintain her independence despite
in fighting, despite battling colonial powers, and despite a strong
prejudice among her own people against women rulers. Plus she
had styled she had kind of some swagger. I'd say

(01:29):
she had a very interesting style. In fact, the best
story about her has the still uncrowned and Zinga acting
as her brother the king's emissary to Portuguese colonists. So
when she saw the Portuguese governor hadn't provided her with
a chair because he was intending to humble her and
have her sit on a mat, she ordered her attendant
down on hands and knees and carried out negotiations sitting

(01:52):
on her back. So that's a power play for sure.
It certainly embarrassed the Portuguese. That made an impression on
all of those who who witnessed it. But the Women
in World History Encyclopedia describes in Zinga as a proto
nationalist leader. They describe her as wildly and intelligent. I'd
say the chair stunt proves that, and one who quote

(02:14):
maintained her power by adopting contradictory strategies which ultimately succeeded.
And I really think contradictory. Once you hear about this,
lady is a super understatement because Zinga was a ruler
willing to embrace, for instance, Catholicism and then go to
ritual cannibalism from that, and then back to Catholicism again,

(02:35):
all to keep power. She would broke her a slave
trading agreement with the Portuguese, then announce her kingdom as
a safe haven for escape these all over Africa. You know,
these real dramatic changes in policy in order to to
hold onto her power. And those are just a couple examples,
and it really worked. The style of hers really work.

(02:56):
She ruled for forty years and she established a kingdom
that of we did colonization for about two hundred and
fifty years after her death. But first, before we go
into all of that, how did she get her start
and what was she up against? So we're going to
take a little bit of a look at her background
to begin with. And to look at her background, we
have to also look at the background on the situation

(03:19):
at the time. The Portuguese had arrived in Africa in
the late fourteen hundreds. They wanted slaves for their colony
in Brazil, but they didn't want the competition of the
English and French in northeast Africa, so they went south
to what is today Congo and Angola. When they reached
Angola by the early fifteen hundreds, they found a collection
of African kingdoms ruled by aristocratic families that would frequently

(03:41):
turn over the kingship, so they'd flip it between noble families,
so any designated king was really only in power temporarily
before the next family captured the crown. It reminds me
a little bit of elected officials, but also just sort
of coup after coup after coup um nobody would really
count on passing on the kingship to his son. But

(04:04):
one of the more important kingdoms in this area was Indongo,
which was formed by the Mundu people in the late
fifteenth century. And the Mundu had been threatened by the
Kingdom of Congo to the north, and eventually, of course
also by the Portuguese, and this had really forced them
to tighten up their leadership structure from what you just

(04:24):
described to Blina and make it more about heredity and
center power and government in the Indongo kingdom, which would
be ruled by a king called angla Uh. And just
because it sort of helps me understand this and put
it into more context. It's that word and gola um
that drove the Portuguese to start calling the whole area

(04:47):
and gola kind of strange sense. That word just means king.
It's do you think that maybe the whole area would
end up being called Indongo. That's not how it went down.
So this noble run system was also put to the
side and favor of a royal slave run state, the
slaves taking high positions in the military or government, even
collecting taxes, kind of like the janissaria. So not how

(05:08):
you normally think of slaves disenfranchise um. These were people
who had more power and presumably could be relied on
a little more than the in fighting nobles. So at
first the Portuguese treated in Dongo and other kingdoms in
the area as trading partners, albeit kind of trading partners
with a gun to their head. Basically, supply of slaves

(05:30):
will be your trading partners. If you don't, well, then
your own people will be enslaved, maybe even you the nobles,
or you the rulers. So not much of a choice there.
But once they established a slave trading base at Luanda Island,
they got even more aggressive the Portuguese. The Portuguese did right,
old trading partners suddenly became enemies at that point. After

(05:51):
a few decades of fighting, things were at a semi
stalemate until about sixteen twelve to sixteen twenty two, when
the Portuguese brought in the Bengala warriors as mercenaries, and
the in Bengala practiced ritual cannibalism. The enslaved boys for troops,
they killed kids born in their camps, and they had
democratically elected leaders. I mean, except for that last part,

(06:13):
they're pretty scary. They were really really terrifying, and with
im Bengala help, the Portuguese did manage to finally bring
Dongo that kingdom to its knees, and the king Bandi
had to flee his own country. Okay, so this is
where our lady Zinga finally comes in. So with King

(06:34):
Bande on the Lamb, he sent his sister who is
in Zinga, as an emissary to the Portuguese in about
sixteen twenty one or sixteen twenty two, and she was
there for pretty serious negotiations, not only to try to
patch things over with the Portuguese, you know, try to
get it so her brother could return to his kingdom,

(06:54):
but to stave off to African competitors to the in
Dongo throne as well. But despite you know, those like
really serious needs of hers, she did not come begging
to the Portuguese at all. She of course pulled off
that servant chair stunt that Dablina described in the beginning,
something that was so absolutely shocking to those present that

(07:16):
one of them, Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi, depicted it in this
really fantastic illustration. You can look this one up and
I think just the expressions on everybody's face is really great.
And Zinga looks quite comfy and stately on her human chair.
The non weight bearing attendants look pretty impressed with their

(07:37):
not their queen at this point, but a representative of
their king. Some of them are almost smirking a little bit.
The governor looks super awkward, his legs are all splayed
out while he's sitting on his traditional chair. And meanwhile
the servant on the ground looks solid, not like she's
suffering under the under the weight or anything. It's a
great picture. So what happened after that little snapshot that

(07:58):
we see, well, once did and Zinga went to work
Portuguese Governor Korea Disoza demanded that all Portuguese war prisoners
be released. She demanded that all Mbundu people be returned
from slavery in Brazil and exchange. So they were kind
of at a stalement, I say. Eventually they settled on

(08:20):
releasing Portuguese prisoners in exchange for in Bondi being allowed
to remain ruler of an independent kingdom for good measure,
and Zinga also converted to Catholicism. Governor Disza acted as
her godfather in this case, and she actually took his name,
becoming Donna Anna Dissa. She knew it couldn't hurt to
become the Portuguese Christian ally exactly. So it sounds like

(08:42):
Bondi would be eternally grateful for his sister for working
out this fantastic deal. But the two had a bit
of a history of bad blood together, and Bondi himself
had killed their father as well as possibly different sources
say uh and Zinga's infant son, in order to really
consolidate his own power. But before her stint as a negotiator,

(09:06):
and Zinka had definitely been reduced to having to flee
her own kingdom because of her brother, so things weren't
great between them. So maybe it's not a huge surprise
that in sixteen twenty four Bondi wound up dead under
mysterious circumstances. That's the way he seen described everywhere. Not
quite clear on how how he met his end, but regardless,

(09:29):
and Zinga took control after that, despite some major obstacles
against her becoming queen. Just to give you an idea
of what those obstacles were, hereditary kingship was not set
in stone at the time, and even if it was,
Zinka's mother was a slave, so I would have excluded her.
That would not have applied to her. And even if

(09:50):
that was okay, she was a woman, and that Umbundu
specifically did not allow women to rule. So it begins
to sound less like a cork of lineage and more
were like a coup. With the fact that she did
become the leader, and since her position was so unstable,
she really desperately needed the support of the Portuguese to
maintain it, so she entered into a deal with them

(10:10):
that opened up Umbundu areas to Portuguese slavers. She wanted
to become a middleman for slaves, not a source. She
also welcomed their missionaries into her capital, which strengthened her
base there, and she by doing that, she also emphasized
that she was a Christian. Ally, she was working definitely,
but it wasn't long before she was betrayed by the Portuguese,

(10:33):
changing alliances herself, she banded up with the former enemy
and Portuguese ally that we talked about before, the in
Bungalow warriors, who conveniently enough and unlike her own people,
had a tradition of centering power on kinless women. And
she also got some support from a pretty unexpected source.
Considering that she was still acting as a middleman for

(10:56):
slave she sent out a message to escape slaves across
the region and even the continent, offering asylum in exchange
for loyalty. And so she ultimately transformed herself from a middleman,
from a slave provider to a safe haven for these
fiercely loyal escape beas. Because you can imagine, if you
finally got somebody who would stick up for you, you

(11:18):
would ultimately fight for her. So she further undermined the Portuguese,
not just by collecting these escaped slaves and turning them
into her own warriors, but by placing moles in the
Portuguese forces. So she knew that the colonizers relied on
black soldiers, and she'd send out her own guys into

(11:38):
their ranks. And then these infiltrators would gradually work their
way up and begin to cause trouble, you know, stir
things up, encourage desertion, and sometimes whole companies of Portuguese
soldiers would turn tail and join Zinga, taking of course
all of their nice Portuguese equipment and gear and weapons

(11:59):
with them. But still, in spite of all this, by
about sixteen twenty nine, the Portuguese forced in Zinga to
abandon in Dongo. She spread rumors that she died and
tried to kind of drop off the map at this point.
Then suddenly she popped up again on the outer edges
of Umbundu Lands in the Kingdom of Matamba. Matamba had
been left desolate in the first round of the Portuguese

(12:21):
in Bengala raids from the sixteen twenties and left rulerless
unlike Indonga, though Matamba had an ancient tradition of women rulers,
and so nin Zinga was able to consolidate her power there,
and she again offered sanctuary to runaways and formed a
new kind of military, one where kids would leave their
families and grow up in militia communes, again a way

(12:44):
to inspire this fierce loyalty to her, she'd also this
is another good way to get loyalty. She would use
her sisters as warriors, and even going to battle herself,
dressed in skins and equipped, as we mentioned, with that
sword around her neck, an axe and her girdle, and
bows and arrows in her hands. So a pretty scary

(13:05):
figure in her own right. But her most important initiative
in Matamba came in the sixteen thirties when she blocked
the main slave trail to the interior, closing down the
market in a sense. She still sold some slaves off herself,
but she kept more as mercenaries. So this made Batamba
a gateway, not a source for slaves. It was the

(13:25):
ultimate goal in Dongo from the start, so to control
these routes more thoroughly. Though she'd formed confederation, she knew
that she couldn't defeat all her neighbors. She need to
work with some of them, so she'd partner up with
neighbors like Congo den both keep them off, and also
started a rebellion in Dongo, which by this point was

(13:46):
controlled by a Portuguese puppet, so her enemy. Essentially, she
made a new European ally too in the sties. When
the Dutch came into the picture, she figured it was
a great way to um play another European power off
of the Portuguese, and uh it worked pretty well. The
Dutch occupied the Portuguese trading post at Luanda, and by

(14:09):
the Portuguese withdrew. This ended up sort of being the
apex of Zinga's power, though, and she really worked to
make sure everybody knew how strong she was. She also
at this point wanted to get around any lingering questions
that maybe lying around about whether she was actually fit
to serve as a woman, so naturally she declares herself

(14:32):
king just avoided the issue entirely that way exactly, And
this kingship of hers came complete with a harem of men.
She would dress the men in this harem as women
and have them sleep in the same quarters as her
ladies in waiting, the same female attendants who doubled as
her personal bodyguard to further bolster her position as a

(14:52):
woman leader, she'd promote other ladies too, powerful positions in
the government and the army, and of course this we've
already mentioned, her sis serves out there fighting in the
army along with her. But her powers still hinged on
playing one European power off of another, and when the
Dutch left the region in sixteen fifty in Zinga was
forced to ally herself with her longtime enemy, the Portuguese.

(15:17):
She signed a treaty with them in sixteen fifty six
and promised to deliver a quota of slaves, but also
got their assurance that she'd be able to maintain her
kingdom's independence and end the war with Dongo. To that
war that had been going on for so long with
the puppet ruler, she re converted to Christianity, and even

(15:37):
though she left no heirs, when she died in sixteen
sixty three, her general started this dynasty of queens who
this is absolutely amazing. They ruled Matomba and in Dongo,
which of course did not have that tradition of female
rulers for eighty of the one hundred and four years
after her death. The last of those women rulers died

(15:57):
in seventeen sixty seven. Matta but wasn't integrated into the
Portuguese colony of Angola until nineteen o nine, whereas in
Dongo was lost to Angola bout the Puppet King's son
just a few years after in Zinga's death. So it
just goes to show what a strong kingdom she built
on her up there. And according to the Met Museum,
which has loads of information on the famous servant chair illustration,

(16:20):
and Zinga became a sensation in Europe around the same
time after the publication of her biography, Zinga Randy Angola. Yeah,
and apparently it was a pretty salacious biography with a
lot of exaggerated facts in it, but it really made
her a popular figure. People were interested in learning more
about her. I kept on thinking, though, I know, we

(16:40):
we don't. We don't like to compare people to Western
figures all the time. We've talked about that. I think
with Lakshmi Bay wasn't she called the joan of But
I also think that sometimes it really helps you give
a comparison, It helps make place it in context. It does,
And for this once I started reading about and I
couldn't help think of two figures. One was Elizabeth first

(17:04):
and the other was hat shep Set of Egypt. And
she reminded me of Elizabeth because of the obvious struggle
she had to overcome about her gender. You know, England
was not really cool with a female ruler and that
and then objections to her lineage too, you know, her
mother was a slave. And then she reminds me of
Elizabeth most though, because that that mastering of playing one

(17:29):
group off against the other. I mean, it would really
take a strong person to be able to do that
and not end up losing your kingdom or becoming a
puppet ruler yourself. She reminded me of hat Shops that
because of her just total decision to avoid the prejudice
against queens and rule as a king, I mean, complete
with this harem of of men um. So I thought

(17:52):
that was strange that one person could remind me of
two so very different queens. Yeah, but I think that's
it makes in Sinka so unique, is that she reminds
you of these two people, but she kind of mixes
them both different ads in her own thing, and it's
totally different and maybe actually the perfect Halloween costume you
saw this on a Halloween costume site, right, Yeah, it

(18:14):
was an elaborate costume they had set out for her,
So maybe some of y'all that's when for you to consider.
All right, well, I guess we'll have to wait to
hear from our listeners then and see if they dress
that bazar. But speaking of our listeners, it's time to
move on to listener mail. First, we have this beautiful
sunset picture from Guatemala that Ryan sent us. He says,

(18:37):
I hope you got this postcard that I sent from Germany.
I'm from California but in a Master's of International Nature
conservation program, and he says that right now he's doing
research in the mountains of Guatemala. So thank you Ryan
for sending us this. It's beautiful. It's a lovely card.
We have another postcard from Crispin and Chrispin, your handwriting
it's like a font almost, it's pretty amazing. So he

(18:58):
wrote to us to say that he loves the podcast
and they provide a great deal of entertainment which is
in very short supply when living here in the outback
of Central Australia. I'm a British guy who decided to
abandon the Cubicle and spend a few years traveling around
the world. I have dropped my backpack to live and
work for three months in the village of Laura. I

(19:19):
believe at Iris Rock in April, my time in Australia
comes to an end and I will be off to
Southeast Asia. So thank you very much. He also suggested
that we do an episode on Irish Rock, which would
certainly be um, certainly be interesting. We haven't done Australian
history since our our ned Kelly Bush Rangers. That's true,

(19:41):
we have had a big dump of Australian Oh we
had our our Freedom writers too, so this would probably
be from much older history than that. So thank you
to both of you guys for sending such lovely postcards.
And I also want to thank my friend Marie Crystal
too for helping us out with these pronunciations. We did
our best with the m and ends down. We didn't

(20:01):
butcher them too badly. Of course, any mistakes are ours
and not herds. But thank you again. I really appreciate it.
And if any of you guys want to suggest topics,
maybe some more African history, we are getting their February too,
and so we'll be covering Black History Month, of course.
Uh please email us. We have a new email address.

(20:22):
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(20:43):
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