History of Queen Ana Nzinga

Nzinga of Ndongo was born in 1582 in what is now northern Angola and western DRC. Her father became king of the Ndongo when she was 10 years old. Being both her father’s favourite and an unlikely heir, she received military training, education and participated in several functions in her father’s court. These were also times of crisis for the young Ndongo kingdom with long standing conflicts with the neighbouring Kingdom of Kongo and the arrival of the Portuguese in 1575. While the Portuguese were defeated by the Ndongo in 1590, they continued to slowly take more and more territory and taking numerous people as slaves. In 1607 the Portuguese formed an alliance with the Imbangala – a notorious band of mercenary warriors. 10 years later, in 1617, Nzinga’s father died and her brother Ngola Mbandi took the throne.

After her son was killed by Mbandi to ensure no threats to his claim, Nzinga fled to the neighbouring Kingdom of Matamba. When Mbandi was unable to secure an end to the war with the Portuguese, he asked his sister to act as an emissary to the Portuguese. Nzinga was supremely skilled in diplomacy and was able to establish a peace treaty.

In 1624 her brother died, having declared that Ana should succeed him. She married one of the Imbangala chiefs and assumed the throne. Over the next decades, Queen Nzinga fought a series of campaigns to reclaim the lands lost by her brother to the Portuguese and neighbouring kingdoms.

Queen Nzinga’s diplomatic efforts saw her form an alliance with the Dutch in the 1640s to aid in the campaign against Portuguese expansion in the area. The Dutch war against Portugal was part of the greater Thirty Years’ War., thereby making parts of Angola lesser known battlefields in that war. Peace with Portugal was finally reached in 1656.

By converting to Christianity, Queen Nzinga had hoped to have her kingdom recognised as a Christian kingdom on par with any in Europe. Queen Ana Nzinga died on 17 December 1663, and was succeeded by her sister Kumba.

Regarding Names and Spellings:

As with most pre-20th century names, there numerous different spellings of Nzinga’s name, also due in part to different translations and transliterations.

In both colonial documents and her own writings, spellings include: Nzinga, Nzingha, Njinga and Njingha, Jinga, Ginga, Zinga, Zingua, Zhinga and Singa. When converting to Christianity she was baptised Ana, after her godmother.

“Ngola” was the Ndongo name for ruler, which is also the etymological root of "Angola".

For more detail and sources see: Heywood, Linda M. Njinga of Angola. Harvard University Press, 2017