The Extraordinary Journey of the Jaga through the Centuries: Critical Approaches to Precolonial Angolan Historical Sources

The Extraordinary Journey of the Jaga through the Centuries:

Critical Approaches to Precolonial Angolan Historical Sources

Translated by Katja Rieck

I

The ancient kingdom of Angola, or more precisely Ndongo—which until 1671 essentially existed in the area north of the Kwanza River in present-day Angola—and the neighboring state of Kasanje, which was established by the Mbangala around 1630—belong to what is historiographically one of the more privileged areas of Africa, the history of which is documented by written sources extending back into the sixteenth century. These sources are even quite numerous, and, because of their diverse nature, often complement each other. Thus there are documentary as well as narrative sources, eyewitness accounts as well as other types. Particularly primary, but also secondary (as well as "tertiary" and "quaternary") sources differ greatly in quality. Despite such differences they share one common factor: virtually without exception they were written by members of foreign, non-African cultures, who came to the area as conquerors, slave traders, and missionaries.¹

However, the greatest problem these sources pose for historians is not their bias—for their authors were all more or less deeply involved in the contemporary political and economic circumstances that they purport to document. Rather, by far the gravest problem for anyone wishing to write not just Portuguese colonial history, but African history, is that none of these authors, unlike those who wrote about neighboring Kongo, lived at the African courts or among Africans (let alone were intimately aquainted with their culture), so that they were not able to observe or experience events directly from the inside.² This considerably reduces the scope of the history that can be reconstructed and risks unjustifiably narrowing or distorting the historical perspective. The few exceptions, such as the reports told by the English slave trader Andrew Battell and the comprehensive syntheses left us by Antonio Cavazzi—both of which unfortunately have been published only as second or third hand renderings of their accounts—thus are accorded even greater historiographical weight.³

Most texts originated on the coast in Luanda. They often were written by eyewitnesses, or at least by contemporaries, but they were written to serve Portuguese assessments, decisions, and actions. They therefore generally record rather selectively either what the Portuguese did or African reactions directly or indirectly provoked by the former's presence or deeds that immediately affected Portuguese interests.⁴ As a result, the sources pertaining to the first phase of the Conquista (1579-90) in Ndongo are relatively numerous, but none of them stem from the opposing side. At least some reports, particularly those which were written fairly close to the time of the original eyewitness accounts or were written by those who had actually interviewed eyewitnesses, do chronicle the individual stages of the Portuguese advance, even if they do so only in outline form. Although these accounts also have the general tendency to emphasize Portuguese victories, they at least do not omit the defeats entirely, unlike later secondary sources (such as Pigafetta and to some extent Cadornega).⁵ Since the subject matter of these sources pertains almost exclusively to military events, we are forced to search here for clues regarding, for example, Ndongo's internal situation. In fact the nature, place, time, and extent of the resistance, the outcome of the battles and the actions that resulted permit us to derive a whole series of significant conclusions.

The problems inherent in these (and generally all) written sources, however, are not only conditioned by the content; they also have a formal aspect that has hitherto received little attention. Because these documents are linguistic constructs, the question arises as to the relationship between language and reality. But this relationship involves more than just the changing meanings of words. Rather it centers on how language itself dictates specific structures of interpretation and understanding. So, not only can the shifting...