Discussão sobre a temática dos Jagas

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From: Russell Lohse, University of Texas , Date Posted: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 18:40:58 -0800

Can any list members speak to the most recent scholarship or scholarly opinion on the identity of the "Jagas" who invaded Kongo in 1568, and/or remained in Kongo in later centuries?  I am familiar with the articles of Miller, Thornton, and Hilton from the '70s and '80s, and Adriano Perreira's 1990 summary in _Economia e sociedade em Angola na epoca da rainha Jinga_, but don't know the "state-of-the-art" views of specialists today.

Is there any evidence of Central Africans claiming the "Jaga" identity for themselves (especially in the precolonial period)?  I ask because I have found a case of two enslaved African men in 1720s Central America who identified their "nation" as "yaga" and "llaga," which would have been pronounced "Jaga" in Spanish.  They arrived in a contraband shipment, probably in the 1690s.  Among the other Africans with whom they arrived were men and women who identified themselves as "congo" and "mina" (Gold Coast or Upper Slave Coast).

In _Dona Beatriz_, Dr. Thornton mentions "Yaka" mercenaries in the armies of Pedro III in the 1670s and Joao II in 1691.  The enslavement of such men might explain the origin of the "yagas" in Central America.  Thank you for any ideas,

From: John Thornton, Boston University       Date Posted: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 12:50:46 -0800

On the original "Jaga" question, there has been one new addition to the historiography since the debate of the late 70s, that being Paulo Jorge de Sousa Pinto, "Em torno de um problema de identidade:  os 'Jaga' na Historia do Congo e Angola," _Mare Liberum_ 18-19 (December 1999): 193-243. which includes publishing of an extract of a previously unused source.  The problem has also been reviewed in the new edition and French translation of Pigafetta's book, edited by Michel Chandeigne (UNESCO, 2002) to which I contributed some discussion and notes as well. This is found in a long footnote pp. 291-95.

Both the term Jaga and its various forms (Yaca, Maiacca, Yaca, etc) were used in later writing.  On the one hand it was regularly used to refer to Imbangala bands, both Kasanje and others in Portuguese service through the nineteenth century.  It was also used regularly in Kongo through the middle of the eighteenth as well to refer to people who lived north of the Kongo river and occasionally raided southwards.  Such people often supported the candidate for the throne based in Lemba.  The documentation about Kongo decreases dramatically after c 1720, so the absence of references after then is not necessarily indicative of a diminution of their activity.

Your inventory references could refer to either of these groups, though I would say that barring other indications, the Imbangala are probably meant.

From: Joseph C. Miller, University of Virginia Date Posted: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 16:09:03 -0800

As John Thornton's counterpart in part of the "debates of the 1970s", perhaps I can weigh in usefully with my "take" on Russell's encounter with "llaga" in Spanish America.  This is essentially an updating/restatement of my original position ("Thanatopsis").

Ethnonyms are tricky, slippery critters.  John is correct (he's seldom incorrect) that there were people going by this name from early on, north of the Congo/Zaire River.  And there's no question that by the mid-eighteenth century other people along the middle/lower Kwango had a similar-sounding name. There's lots of ethnography on both.  But neither of these possible coincidences (all available to us only through the tin ears of European listeners at the time, and through the notorious creativity of colonial ethnography) needs to relate to the events of 1568.  Those interested in an obsolescent form of the argument to be made here can consult "Requiem".

So let's look at Russell's potentially interesting discovery in the carefully historicized form in which he introduces it, along the lines of John's tracings of the origins of the '20. and odd negroes" who reached Jamestown in 1619. This works, in my opinion.  But one has to have this sort of historical plausibility (not similarity, or alleged cognate form, in name) to pursue the case.

Then I'd go to the Harvard database to check on possible ships on the necessary route, at the probable time ... remembering that by the 1690s the Portuguese in Angola had been using the term "Jaga" for 80 years to refer to the yet-again-entirely-distinct "Imbangala" bands inland along both banks of the Kwanza River.  However, by that late date, "Jaga" was declining as a collective referent and becoming restricted to allied/vassal title-holders in the interior who derived their authority from Imbangala predecessors in/around the 1610s-20s.  Many Africans were classed in the Americas more by ethnic-sounding designations given them by their sellers in Africa (or transporters on the Atlantic), according to perceived personal advantage in the Americas than by identities they would have claimed for themselves "at home".

Happy hunting, and please do share your results.  I would also be interesting if others could report other occurrences of this particular "ethnonym", particularly as to timing.  

From: Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, Sorbonne Date Posted: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 12:16:05 -0800

I would like to remind people that Cadornega (Historia Geral..., 1680, v. II, p.179) characterized "jaga" not as a particular ethnic group but as a "profession" ("profissao"). One century later, Elias Alexandre da Silva Correa (História de Angola, 1782, v. II, p. 50) still used the same collective notion, defining jaga as itinerant warriors of different peoples: "os jágas sao governadores de gente belicosa e ambulante que admitem variedade de naçoes, e debaixo do mesmo nome se entendem os governadores e os governados que forma este corpo". For this reason I believe the word jaga, in its generic sense, may be used to describe the events of the 17th and 18th centuries in Congo and Angola. Also, I think there is no reason to write kingdom of Kongo, instead of kingdom of Congo (see my book "O Trato dos Viventes", Companhia das Letras, Sao Paulo, 2000, pp. 66, 89-94).

From: John Thornton, Boston University Date Posted: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 08:22:58 -0800

Luiz Felipe de Alencastro raises an important, and absolutely correct point.  The bands that the Portuguese dubbed as "jagas" were indeed not ethnic groups but roving bands, at least originally.  As such they absorbed their captives from wherever they went, and they were very mobile.  However, there is a second problem, and that is that by the time we reach the eighteenth century there are some Jagas that were quite settled, and for whom this term would be a regular identity, or least might be, for example the Jaga Cassange in the Kwango valley.  We cannot say, of course, if people of such a group would consider themselves as "jagas" or would use the term in such a way that a 1720 inventory would record it as an ethnic name.  They might obviously call themselves either Cassanges or perhaps Imbangala, or even Isinde, which would be acceptable Kimbundu terms.

The term jaga, is of course, not strictly a Kimbundu word, for it was first coined from Kikongo to describe the invaders of 1568.  It probably derived from a Kikongo root -yak- and is found, for example, in later texts from Kongo (ie Girolamo da Montesarchio and Filippo Bernardi da Firenze's informants) as "Aiacca" or, even in Cadornega as "muyacas" (I believe, not having the text next to me) when speaking of the group that raided northern Kongo after 1650 and allied with the pretenders in Mbula/Lemba.  Thus, "Jaga" entered colonial Portuguese to mean any sort of nomadic marauders, and was thus applied to the Imbangala.  It's earliest use, however, is to be found in Andrew Battell, an Englishman, to apply to the Imbangala (he also knew their Kimbundu term).  But here is a problem of editing, for Samuel Purchas, who edited Battell was familiar with Pigafetta's text, the first to use the term and describe the lifestyle.

Neither Imbangala and Isinde, the self-identity Kimbundu terms that Cavazzi recorded as the "real" name of the Jagas he knew (Imbangala in Kasanje), are ethnic terms, as their class membership shows (singular Kimbangala and Kisinde).  This prefix is not a term or construction appropriate to an ethnic group -- in Kimbundu this might be with mu- singular or a- plural, or with the infix -kwa- as is Mukwambundu/Akwambundu, both attested in the catechism of 1642 and still the usual way in Kimbundu to identify ethnic groups, but Kimbundu is a language which is rarely written these days.  Instead, in Kimbundu such a class membership would indeed indicate a profession, for example, diviner/medium or priest is called Kimbanda/imbanda.

As for the spelling issue, what can I say?  When I submitted my first article for publication in the Journal of African History in the fall of 1976, I spelled the kingdom's name as "Congo" since that was the way it was consistently spelled in all documents generated by the kings and other literate people in that kingdom for nearly four hundred years.  I was told that I must adopt the spelling with the "k" because that was the way it was established in English literature, mostly, I think at the insistence of anthropologists at the International Africa Institute. Accepting that logic as all good first time supplicants for glory in the JAH do, I then used it in all my subsequent writing (but not in another article published the same year in the First Edinburgh Conference on Historical Demography--it was too late to change it to acceptable usage).

Now, when my work was to be published in Portuguese in Angola (the journal Fontes e Estudos), they, in turn also insist upon spelling it with a K because that represents the way in which it is spelled in Kikongo in its modern orthography.  In Portugal and Brazil, however, they hang with the spelling with a C, as I see both Alencastro and Alberto da Costa da Silva do in their work, often with specific statements that they wish to stay with more traditional Portuguese orthography.

I have met similar strong sentiments regarding the spelling of Ndongo/Matamba's most famous queen:  Njinga/Nzinga/Nzingha/N'zinga, etc. There is a remarkable amount of emotion vested in these various spellings, as I learned in making public presentations about the queen's life in conjunction with the play "Njinga:  The Queen King" by Ione, which I served as adviser to.  But that is yet another question...

 

From: Joseph Miller, University of Virginia Date Posted: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 08:26:48 -0800

Luis Felipe is sharp-eyed and right about those "jaga" ... and the English gloss that I put on these opportunistic/voluntaristic folks is "bandits".  My current thinking is that they appeared out of the confusion of the wars of the ngola a kiluanje, and thrived under the affliction of the long drought at the end of the sixteenth century.  The rest of the story is relatively well known -- Portuguese/Spanish slave buyers provided the incentive to perpetuate the raiding style the original bands had worked out on into about the 1640s.  The term then shifted to designate the leaders of the descendants of those bands - particularly those in alliance, as mercenaries, with the Portuguese.

But this raises the further and much broader point, which risks diverting this string to a new topic -- which is the general convergence of what we all "profession" or "occupation" with what, among Africans, we designate as "ethnicity".  I submit that the general underlying characteristic of the distinctions we qualify as "ethnic" is adaptation to specific environmental niches, then expanded to include specialized professions, and eventually overlaid further with political identities.  This includes communities formed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries either to exploit or avoid the violence of slaving.  The process continued, of course, through colonialism and independence.  And today as well.

From: John Thornton, Boston University Date Posted: Tue, 3 Feb 2004 12:58:27 -0800

Miller's postings present us with the knotty problem of ethnicity and also take us back to the original query.  How was ethnicity or identity conceived in Angola, by Angolans now in central America, by Spanish notaries recording names on inventories, and what do all of them have in common?

Certainly, as Miller notes, the concept of ethnicity that we tend to use today, almost as a shorthand that obscures a lot but reveals enough that we can talk to each other, is profoundly a colonial concept (though one that has taken on a life of its own by now).  Most of the ethnicities of modern Africa are colonial creations, born of the European idea of nation (but called tribe to make them suitably primitive), that there would be one language, one custom, and one polity for each tribe.

Clearly that was nonsense, and tribal maps, such as Murdock's famous one of 1959, reflected that, though I know that sometimes it has been displayed as a vision of the political situation of pre-colonial Africa. So we are quite right not to look for the ethnicity of the yagas of central America in modern ethnography, discredited even by ethnographers of today.

In the past?  I would argue that from the point of view of Africans ethnic identity varied depending on which side of the Ocean you were. In Africa, I think Africans identified with the highest polity that drew income or service from them.  That was rarely a village, but often a fairly large polity, like Kongo, Mbailundu, or Matamba which taxed and drafted its subjects.  Such subjects might speak different languages, and even follow different customs, but exaction policies would draw the people together.  Military recruitment was, I think vital in these identities, because they brought people from a large area, because armies instill a sense of unity as a way of making service more acceptable, and because humans forced to cooperate in the face of life threatening danger form very tight and often permanent social bonds—and armies, especially operational ones--do this particularly well.  Given the role of army recruitment as the first step toward slavery, I would place a very high premium on this as the "first line" of African identity IN AFRICA.

However, in the Americas, identity would be different.  There were no armies and no polities to mobilize the Africans, though there might be a certain loyalty to the estate where one was enslaved (or at least to its enslaved members), but beyond that there was a sense of loyalty to those who spoke the same or similar languages.  Languages might have many names, and dialects, but the key was mutual intelligibility.  One knows when one speaks if the other understands, and one either does or doesn't understand another's speech.  So these language groups, they might have been linguas franca in Africa, or distant dialects that one must strain to understand, even languages that one's enemies might have spoken in Africa, but in America they allowed the kind of mutual communication that only language allows.  So not surprisingly, Africans in America tended to gravitate towards those in their language community, forming self-help, cultural and religious communities to go with it.  Such

identities spread beyond the borders of the estate, and not surprisingly were often the basis for independent activity, such as running away and revolting.

Common languages might not have common names in Africa because they were not the basis for social unity, polities were.  So, Africans might very well pick up strange, colonial names for their languages, as a common name that privileged no one in particular.  Hence the elevation of Koromantin, a small fishing village in modern Ghana as the linguistic names for thousands of "Coromantees" all over English-speaking America, whose language today is called Twi or Akan. 

Finally what about our colonial notary?  We know that notaries routinely assigned slaves to ethnic groups, and typically they bore these ethnic names as a sort of surname.  But these were not entirely standard, and their assignation was probably a certain negotiation between the person receiving the name and the one giving it.  How else can we explain the presence of Andalas, Matambas, Angolas, Abuilas and the like among plantation inventories--all spoke Kimbundu and one never meets "Ambundos" on such lists, or rarely anyway, even though "lingua ambunda" was a common expression in Angola.  At this point, people were still giving their African polity name, and it was probably accepted because otherwise there would be too many Juan Angolas to make sense.

So our yacas, yagas, llacas of the 1720 inventory?  They might be giving this as their ethnic name, from the still surviving bands that were operational in the Benguela hinterland, though not any longer in the Angola/Matamba corridor (and recall that the Portuguese were now using Benguela a lot more at this point, so that the founding of Caconda is within the time of their capture and deportation).  Or perhaps they were taken in the last wars around Mbula, or between Soyo and Mbula in the

1690s that are described by the Capuchins of the area, Luca da Caltanisetta, Marcellino d'Atri, and the Florentines who appear in Ragguagli del Congo.  They might also have come from Cassange, or even the Yaka kingdom on the middle Kwango before Lunda invaders extinguished it.

From: Joseph Miller, University of Virginia Date Posted: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 07:27:19 -0800

[Ed. note, I am renaming this thread "Lusophone African identities" as it has shifted away from a focus on Jaga identity. KS]

With appreciation (and flattery) like that, who could resist another shot ... there is a huge literature on the "invention of ethnicity", which I won't attempt to cover here; except to state my conviction that most of the current "ethnic" names appeared, or acquired current significance, in the course of the massive dislocations and relocations of the 17th-19th centuries, with an extension of that process into the early colonial period.

Of the luso-centric examples you mention, for "Mozambiques" see Edward A. Alpers, "'Mozambiques' in Brazil: Another Dimension of the African Diaspora

in the Atlantic World," in José C. Curto and Renée Soulodre-LaFrance, eds. _Africa and the Americas: Interconnections During the Slave Trade.

Lawrenceville, NJ: Africa World Press, forthcoming. 

See discussion by Peter Mark in the J. Afr. Hist. on Luso-African identities in the area of Cape Verde ["The Evolution of 'Portuguese' Identity: Luso-Africans on the Upper Guinea Coast from the Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century," Journal of African History, 40, 2 (1999): 173-191 and his book, _Portuguese" style and Luso-African identity : precolonial Senegambia, sixteenth-nineteenth centuries_, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.]

  ... also George Brooks on the history.

As for Anzicos - see Jan Vansina, _The Tio kingdom of the Middle Congo, 1880-1892_. London: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute, 1973, as well as his _Paths in the Rainforests : toward a history of political tradition in equatorial Africa_. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.

Happy hunting ... 

From: Russ Lohse, University of Texas at Austin  Date Posted: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 14:07:48 -0800

I want to thank Profs. Miller, Thornton, and Alencastro for responding to my question.  This was just the sort of discussion I was hoping for, not just on the "Jagas," but whether such names refer to ethnicities, polities, occupational strata, etc., who applied the names, what were their origins, etc.  It's nice to hear from 3 of the top scholars within a week!

I'm sure others are working on this, and I'd love to hear about how they are addressing these questions of identity and (self-)identification for other groups and in other regions as well, perhaps particularly with reference to vague names like "anzicos," "moçambiques," "cabo verdes," etc., taking into account, of course, that these may have meant different things at different times.

From: Robert E. Smith [mailto:rsmith@wittenberg.edu]

Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2005 7:26 PM

Two of the earliest studies on the "Jaga Invasions" are Jan Vansina’s “The Foundation of the Kingdom of Kasanje.”  Journal of African History IV,3 (1963): 355-374 and David Birmingham, “The date and significance of the Imbangala invasion of Angola.” JAH VI,2 (1965): 143-152.

 I can’t locate my copy of these (have recently moved), but they are summed up in Vansina, “More on the invasions of Kongo and Angola by the Jaga and the Lunda.” JAH VII,3 (1966): 421-429, and in which he states “There is no difficulty with regard to the date of the Jaga invasion of Kongo. It was 1569.”  (421, and reaffirmed on p. 429).

Next chronologically comes Vansina’s Kingdoms of the Savanna (1966) with a whole section on “The Invasion of the Jaga” (64-69), stating “in 1568, the

Jaga fell on the kingdom.” (64). 

Joseph Miller begins his attack in “The Imbangala and the chronology of early Central African history.” JAH XIII,4 (1972): 549-574, which summarizes

the Birmingham and Vansina articles on  p. 550, and states “Other information in Battell’s account which apparently connected the Imbangala with the ‘Jaga’ and claimed that they had come from Sierra Leone and passed through the kingdom of Kongo in 1568 may be disregarded…” (p. 564-5)

Now appears Miller’s “Requiem for the ‘Jaga.’” Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines XIII,1 (1973): 121-149, asserting “Few myths about Africa or Africans have achieved greater fame on the basis of less evidence than stories of the sixteenth and seventeenth century ‘Jaga’ invasions of Kongo and Angola…In contrast to the generally accepted view, careful analysis of the sources for early Kongo and Angolan history suggests that no such ‘Jaga’ ever existed outside the imaginations of missionaries, slave dealers, and Government officials who created these mythical cannibals to justify or conceal their own activities in Africa.” (121) The masterful analysis that follows makes very interesting reading.  Finally “The ‘Jaga’ invasion was in fact an attack against the mani Kongo by one or more local enemies, probably the inhabitants of Nsundi and Mbata [Provinces] aided by the Tyo or, less likely, by Matamba.” (149)

John Thornton’s “A resurrection for the Jaga.” CEA XVIII, 1-2 (1978): 223-227 is cited by Bontinck (see below—I can’t find my copy) “Thornton maintient la provenance extérieure des envahisseurs…’The 1568 invasion was the work of a distinct ethnic group which bore the name Yaka as its ethnic name;’ en conséquence, Thornton exclut la participation hypothétique des guerriers matamba ou tyo à l’invasion.” (Bontinck 387)

Miller ripostes in “Thanatopsis” CEA XVIII, 1-2 (1978): 229-31, attacks Thornton’s arguments, and concludes “I thus remain unconvinced of the relevance of the l7th century Yaka of the Niari to the complex and still obscure events at Sao Salvador in 1568.” (231)

François Bontinck.  “Un mausolée pour les Jaga.”  CEA XX,3 (1980): 387-389 uses his knowledge of Kongo internal politics to conclude “Miller a définitivement enterré les Jaga comme une ethnie qui se serait emparée du royaume Kongo”, supporting Miller’s arguments as to why the myth has persisted, and making a final political statement which might hold water even today: “Cette intervention a été justifiée comme une aide apportée au ‘gouvernement légitime’ contre des ennemis extérieurs; de nos jours les interventionnistes, en Africa et en Asie, n’ont pas trouvé un prétexte plus plausible.” (389)

Next comes Anne Hilton, in “The Jaga reconsidered.” JAH 22,2 (1981): 191-202. She states “there was an invasion…the events of 1568 were important…(191)  “There is some reason to suppose that it was the ancestors of this last group, the ’Muyakas’ of the lower middle Kwango, who invaded Kongo in 1568.” (197)

Thornton’s book, The Kingdom of Kongo (1983) covers a later period.

Vansina speaks up again almost three decades after his Kingdoms book in “The Kongo kingdom and its neighbors.” Africa from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century, Ed. B.A. Ogot (1992): 546-587+ “The successive deaths of two kings during a war with the Tio of Pool in 1566 and 1567 led to a disarray which, with the invasion of warriors called Jaga from the east, turned to catastrophe.” (557)

Congolese historian Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem, in his monumental Histoire du Zaire (1997) (918 pages!) states “Le dernier de la série [of assassinated kings]…mourut dans la guerre entre [sic] les Jaga en 1568 (89).

Jan Vansina, “Du nouveau sur la conquête lunda au Kwango,” CONGO-AFRIQUE 341 (jan. 2000): 45-58, doesn't seem to speak directly about the earlier disputed Jaga invasion, but that topic is often dealt with in the same context as the Lunda invasion of the Kwango region.

The recent death of the truly generous and deeply knowledgeable Dr. Bontinck is to be greatly regretted.  As far as I know,  the other contributors to this debate are still academically active, and their current viewpoints on this issue would be most interesting, since the opposing stances have not been resolved.

From: Eric Allina-Pisano [mailto:eallinapisano@mail.colgate.edu]

Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 2:36 PM

Citations for work on the Jaga:

Jan Vansina, "More on the Invasions of Kongo and Angola by the Jaga and the Lunda," Journal of African History 7, no. 3 (1966): 421-29.

Joseph Miller, "Requiem for the 'Jaga,'" Cahiers d'Études Africaines 13, no. 1 (1973):  121-149.

John Thornton, "A Resurrection for the Jaga," Cahiers d'Études Africaines 18, no. 1 (1978): 223-227.

 Joseph Miller, "Thanatopsis," Cahiers d'Études Africaines 18, no. 1 (1978): 229-231.

Anne Hilton, "The Jaga Reconsidered," Journal of African History, 22 (1981), 191-202.

And in part,

John Thornton, "Cannibals, Witches, and Slave Traders in the Atlantic World," William and Mary Quarterly 60 (July 2003):  273-294.