The Angolan Wars (Portuguese: Guerras Angolanas) were a long series of conflicts in modern-day Angola involving Portugal, the Kingdom of Ndongo, the Kingdom of Kongo, the Kingdom of Matamba, the Kingdom of Kasanje, the Kingdom of Libolo and the Dutch West India Company primarily, that lasted from 1579 to 1683.
Paulo Dias de Novais founded Luanda in 1576 and hostilities broke out three years later when the king of Ndongo had the Portuguese merchant community in his capital massacred. Conflict then gradually drew in every neighbouring power along with the Dutch West India Company. Though few in number, the Portuguese fielded heavier equipment but more importantly were able to mobilize large numbers of African auxiliaries, on whom the success of operations in the harsh African hinterland depended. Queen Nzinga distinguished herself by forging "the largest coalition of angolan states in the 17th century" against the Portuguese, who ultimately emerged as the main power in the region in spite of severe adversity.
Hostilities primarily involved Portugal and Ndongo between 1579 and 1622. After negotiating a peace treaty on behalf of Ndongo, Queen Nzinga seized power and civil-war erupted between her and the rival claimant Hari a Kiluanje, who sought the support of Portugal. Nzinga in turn associated herself with the controversial Imbangala. The Dutch West India Company captured Benguela and Luanda in 1641, and entered into an alliance with Queen Nzinga and the Kongo, among others, against the Portuguese. After a period of isolation in the interior during which the Portuguese fought against Nzinga, the Dutch and Kongo surrounded and cut-off from the sea, Salvador Correia de Sá restored Angola to Portuguese rule in 1648. Queen Nzinga then signed a peace in 1656 and shifted to a policy of subordination to Portugal and support for Catholicism. The final 27-year period was marked by the defeat of Kongo at the Battle of Ambuíla, the annexation of Ndongo by Portugal and the definite vassalization of Matamba, which in effect brought the Angolan Wars to a close.
These conflicts radically altered the balance of power in the region and marked it deeply. They were recorded primarily by António de Oliveira Cardornega in General History of the Angolan Wars, an epic narrative in three volumes that followed the style of Portuguese chronicles of Asian and American conquest.
Context
The Portuguese reached Angola in 1482 during the reign of King John II. Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão contacted the Kingdom of Kongo and established friendly relations between the two realms. In 1491, the king of Kongo converted to Catholicism, and his kingdom henceforth became frequented by Portuguese ambassadors, missionaries and merchants, some of whom settled in the country. Relations remained stable and in 1568 Portugal dispatched an expeditionary corps to help king Álvaro I suppress an uprising or invasion of the "Jagas" in Kongo, which greatly strengthened relations between the two kingdoms and earned the Portuguese high regard by the kings of Kongo. Kongo henceforth paid Portugal a fifth of all nzimbu fished at the Island of Luanda as tribute.
To the south of Kongo, the Kingdom of Ndongo had sought to establish direct contact with Portugal as early as 1518. Ndongo seems to have been created from Kongo, and the rulers of Kongo claimed overlordship over the kingdom, but had little real control. Portugal dispatched a first diplomatical mission to Ndongo in 1520 and although it was unsuccessful, Ndongo sent another to Portugal in 1549, which resulted in Paulo Dias de Novais being dispatched to Ndongo at the head of a second mission. Upon his return, he obtained a grant to establish a colony in Angola. Ndongo sent another embassy to Lisbon in 1575, headed by Dom Pedro da Silva Manuel, an ethnic Kongolese raised in Portugal. He bore gifts of copper, silver, slaves and portions of Kikongo wood. Silva Manuel was well received, admitted to the Order of Santiago as a knight and given grants for his support.
In 1576 Paulo Dias de Novais founded the city of Luanda. Novais hoped to obtain access to the legendary silver mines that were purported to exist at Cambambe in the kingdom of Ndongo and he had orders from King Sebastian to follow a policy of peaceful bilateral relations. He therefore signed an alliance with the ngola ("king") of Ndongo, Nzinga Ngola Kilombo Kia Kasenda. Novais offered his services to Ndongo and fought several times for the ngola against rebels. In exchange for this military aid, king Kasenda would sell rebels, prisoners of war and his subjects sentenced to death for theft or adultery as slaves to the Portuguese, thus earning him great profits.
Relations between Ndongo and Portugal were so amicable that king Kasenda requested an ambassador for his capital of Kabasa and Novais dispatched Pero da Fonseca with a guard of 20 men for the task.
The Ndongo Wars, 1579-1622
Notwithstanding the friendly relations with the king of Ndongo, Novais was considered an unwelcome intruder by the numerous freelance Portuguese traders already in the region, and some sought to disrupt relations between the two.
The experienced and influential trader Francisco Barbudo d'Aguiar quarreled with Pero da Fonseca at Kabasa and so he claimed to king Kasenda in a private audience that Novais was preparing to conquer his kingdom for its mines, that Fonseca was a spy and his entourage a fifth column. Kasenda had the Portuguese community assemble before him the following day, to hear the allegations of Barbudo, which they denied in astonishment but the king disregarded their arguments. After consulting with his advisors therefore, the ngola was persuaded to have all the Portuguese at Kabasa massacred. Barbudo however was also executed, because the king believed that "it was not right that one should live who had caused the death of his countrymen". The same fate befell the Portuguese merchants scattered throughout the country and their property was seized. Kasenda also massacred almost a thousand kongolese who were then at Kabasa, which further damaged relations between Kongo and Ndongo.
The betrayal of the king of Ndongo as it became known marked the beginning of hostilies between Ndongo and Portugal. The outbreak of the war also stranded ambassador Dom Pedro da Silva Manuel in Lisbon, and for the following eighty years Ndongo ceased trying to have diplomatic relations with Europe directly.
The First Ndongo War, 1579-1604
After the massacre at Kabasa, Kia Kasenda began assembling an army to destroy Luanda. Novais was camped with 60 Portuguese soldiers and 200 Africans near the Kwanza river at that time and he received an envoy from the ngola with a message not to proceed any further into Ndongo. Out of suspicion, the Portuguese commander relocated his troops to Anzele, in Ilamba, between the rivers Cuanza and Bengo, ten or twelve leagues from Luanda, where he erected a timber fort, equipped with two cannon. Only twenty days later did he receive news of the massacre and the approaching Ndongo army. Far from being intimidated, Novais inspired his men with the hope of avenging the massacre. At the siege of Anzele, the Portuguese were attacked by 12,000 warriors but the artillery fire threw the Ambundu into disarray and a Portuguese sortie forced them to withdraw. King Kasenda then requested peace, but Novais denounced him and rejected terms, upon which the king of Ndongo executed his advisors.
Meanwhile, on 23 February 1580 a fleet arrived from Portugal with reinforcements and among their number were two Jesuit fathers, one of which, Father Baltasar Barreira, promptly travelled to Kongo to request military aid. With his forces now numbering 1200 men among Europeans and Africans, Novais sailed up the Cuanza on two galliots, one small caravel and two batels, and for two months he fought against hostile lords along its banks and reduced several to vassalage, under the tropical rain. Ndongo was divided in hundreds of small regions ruled by local tribal lords, called sobas. Novais established a new fortified camp at Mocumbe on 16 November, and for the following eight months he remained there with his forces scouting the surrounding territory, skirmishing with hostile sobas, and baptizing others who sided with Portugal. Still in 1581, soba Songa of Quissama converted to Catholicism along with 400 others after being defeated, and he adopted the name Dom Paulo de Novais, in deference to Paulo Dias de Novais.
As a result of Father Barreiras efforts, on early 1581, Kongo marched to the aid of Novais with a 60,000 man army that included 120 Portuguese but the battle they fought with the forces of Ndongo by the river Bengo proved indecisive. By July, Novais was already running low on provisions and many of his comrades had been decimated by tropical disease, but Father Barreira exhorted the Portuguese at Luanda to organize a relief expedition that reached Mocumbe on the 24th.
For the following eight years, Novais fought several battles against Ndongo, vassalized and converted numerous sobas and founded Massangano in 1582. Kia Kasendas reputation for cruelty led many sobas to side with the Portuguese. In 25 August 1585 captain André Ferreira Pereira scored an important victory with 130 Portuguese soldiers and as many as 10,000 auxiliaries against an Ndongo army with a considerable part of its nobility, at the Battle of Casicola. This allowed the Portuguese to pacify the region of Ilamba around Luanda as many hostile lords switched their allegiance to Portugal in the aftermath. Later in September of that same year, king Kasenda set out against the Portuguese at the head of his forces in person but he was ambushed and routed at the First Battle of the Lucala, which confirmed the victory of Casicola.
In 1586, Paulo Novais was attacked by an immense force. Even though he was very outnumbered, only having at his disposal about 100 Portuguese and a number of African soldiers, he was able to achieve victory against the attackers, mainly due to the bravery of his men and how well he conducted the defence.
Novais died on 9 May 1589, and was buried in a simple tomb in front of the church of Massangano. He had funded the Angola venture out of his own pocket and died bankrupt. His successors decided to proceed with the war against Ndongo until the mines of Cambambe had been secured.
For the next fifteen years the few but heavily armed Portuguese undertook several campaigns against Ndongo with the support of a great number of auxiliary warriors supplied by vassal or allied African lords, established new settlements and forts in the interior, captured the salt mines of Quissama, which deprived Ndongo of its most valuable export, and finally secured the region of Cambambe, where a fort was built. The silver mines rumoured to exist there however, were found to contain only lead.
Shortly after the construction of the Fort of Cambambe just 70 kilometers from the capital of Ndongo, the successor of Kia Kasenda, Ambandi Angola, requested peace and governor Manuel Cerveira Pereira proceeded to vote the matter in a council with his closest men. His officers voted to end hostilities and a peace was signed in 1604.
The Second Ndongo War, 1611-1622
In 1611 the king of Ndongo Ambandi Angola began attacking the market fairs in the interior and the Portuguese merchants that took part in them. Governor Bento Banha Cardoso prepared a new campaign against Ndongo and signed a pact of alliance with a number of Imbangala warlords, who would henceforth serve the Portuguese as mercenaries. Among them was Kulashingo of Kasanje, who crossed north over the Cuanza along with his war-band with Portuguese support and settled on the fringes of Portuguese Angola. His was the most powerful of the Imbangala bands.
Cardoso managed to temporarily pacify the region, build a fort at Ambaca and bring the number of Ambundu sobas under Portuguese suzerainty to a total of 78.
After his campaign against Ndongo, Cardoso had to fight off an invasion by the Dembos ruler Nambuangongo, who almost reached Luanda in search of food. A period of peace then subsided over the region, which Cardoso considered to be convenient as gunpowder was almost exhausted in Angola.
Cardoso was succeeded in the Autumn of 1615 by Manuel Cerveira Pereira, who had persuaded king Phillip III to establish a new colony at Benguela. While preparing the expedition, Pereira pacified some rebellious lords in the interior, and eighteen months after returning to Luanda, he headed south, leaving the city in charge of António Gonçalves Pita. Cerveira Pereira reached the region of Benguela but found that the Kingdom of Benguela had been wiped out by the Imbangala, and the area was so depopulated and devoid of economic activity that he proceeded further south with his expedition. By that point, the land south of the Cuanza had been "demolished and destroyed by Imbangala activity".
The second war against Ndongo reached new heights in 1617. Early in this year Ambandi Angola was succeeded on the throne by Angola Ambandi, who violently persecuted political rivals, killed a half-brother, his half-brothers' mother, her siblings, the Court major-domo, numerous officials and their families, forcibly sterilized his three sisters, Funji, Mukambu and Nzinga, and killed the latters son. Angola Ambandi also rejected diplomacy with the Portuguese and gathered an army to attack them.
In Luanda meanwhile, the Portuguese governor was succeeded in office by Luís Mendes de Vasconcelos, who had proposed to connect Angola and Mozambique by land and annex Ndongo, a project for which he had the support of many dissatisfied Ambundu lords that voluntarily joined his forces. Among them was a rival claimant to the throne: Hari a Kiluanje, lord of Pungo Andongo.