Njinga Mbande, Queen of Ndongo and Matamba (ca. 1583–1663)

Abstract Late sixteenth‐ and seventeenth‐century Angola was a place of increasing warfare, slave trading, and proliferation of firearms. Njinga Mbande was the eldest daughter of King Mbande of Ndongo, a state organized by Mbundu people, who resisted Portuguese invasion in the last part of the 1500s. Based at their slaving port of Luanda on the coast, the Portuguese had invaded Ndongo in 1575 to gain greater control over the interior, though into the 1580s they were halted by tropical disease and African resistance. At the time her brother came to power in 1617, Ndongo was defeated by a Portuguese army employing Imbangala mercenaries. Taking an active role in the slave trade, a number of Imbangala raiding groups incorporated captive young men into their ranks and were greatly feared because of their physical agility in combat and reputation for ritual cannibalism and child‐killing. After a failed Portuguese campaign in 1622, Njinga was sent to Luanda to negotiate a settlement between Ndongo and Portugal. At this meeting Njinga famously refused to squat on the floor and instead sat on the back of a kneeling servant to be at eye level and hence on equal terms with the Portuguese governor, Joao Correira de Sousa, who had a chair. In order to solidify the peace treaty, she accepted Christianity and was baptized Ana de Sousa.