Ndongo

Ndongo, historical African kingdom of the Mbundu people. The original core of the kingdom was in the highlands east of Luanda, Angola, between the Cuanza and Lucala rivers. At its height in the late 16th century, it stretched west to the Atlantic coast and south of the Cuanza.

According to early tradition, Ndongo was founded from the Kongo kingdom, probably in the late 15th or early 16th century. Ndongo’s kings bore the title ngola, which later gave its name to the Portuguese colony of Angola. Portugal had intermittent relations with Ndongo from 1520, but it was only in 1575 that a Portuguese base was established—by Paulo Dias de Novais at Luanda Island. At first Dias de Novais cooperated with Ndongo, his forces serving as mercenaries in Ndongo’s army, but in 1579 he and his forces were expelled from the capital and nearly driven from the kingdom. The Kongo kingdom intervened on Dias de Novais’s behalf and rescued his forces, who then waged war against Ndongo. During this conflict, the Portuguese established an important inland fort on the Cuanza at Massangano, which served as a base for the capture and enslavement of people for use in Brazil.

A military stalemate that had developed by the end of the 16th century was broken when the Portuguese governor, Luis Mendes de Vasconcelos, recruited Imbangala mercenaries and drove King Ngola Mbande from his capital to a refuge in the Cuanza River in a series of campaigns (1617–21). Ngola Mbande was able to negotiate a partially satisfactory peace agreement through his sister, Nzinga Mbande (Nzinga also spelled Njinga, Jinga, or Ginga; also known by her Christian name, Ana de Sousa). After Ngola Mbande’s death in 1624, Nzinga took power in Ndongo—first as regent, then as queen. Her rival for the throne, Ngola a Hari, was supported by the Portuguese, and, in the civil war that followed, their combined forces had driven Nzinga from Ndongo to Matamba by 1631. Ngola a Hari was then baptized Felipe I de Sousa and proclaimed king of Ndongo, ruling from his fortified mountain base at Pungo a Ndongo, although the war between Nzinga and Felipe continued in the following years. When the region was invaded by the Dutch in 1641, Felipe allied Ndongo with the Portuguese against them in an indecisive war that ended with the 1648 ouster of the Dutch, led by Brazilian governor Salvador de Sá on behalf of the Portuguese. Years later, a peace treaty between Nzinga and the Portuguese recognized Nzinga as the ruler of Matamba, over protests from Felipe. Felipe’s successor, his son, later revolted against the Portuguese: he was defeated in 1671, and his lands were integrated into the Portuguese colony of Angola.