The standard story of the Jaga is that in 1568, ferocious marauders and cannibals from the interior of Central Africa suddenly invaded Kongo and drove away the mani Kongo, Alvaro I from his kingdom. Alvaro allied with the Portuguese and then drove back the invaders who subsequently invaded Angola and harassed the Mbundu people living in the region. Except for a few remnants concentrated in kingdoms such as Kasanje, the Jaga then disappeared by 1650 or so. It should be noted that this standard story conflates two separate invasions – the first invasion of Kongo in 1568 by the ‘Jaga’ (whose identity is much disputed) and a second invasion of Angola conducted by the Imbangala in the early 17th century. We shall first discuss the 1568 invasion and its ties to a cannibal super-empire in the interior of Africa:

Our only source of the 1568 Jaga invasion is an Italian scholar named Filippo Pigafetta who learned of this invasion by interviewing a Portuguese merchant named Duarte Lopes, who had arrived in Kongo ten years after the supposed invasion (the Jaga were long gone by then). Per this account, the Jaga suddenly invaded the kingdom of Kongo through the Mbata province. The mani Kongo Alvaro met them in battle and was defeated; he then fled to an island refuge on the River Zaire alongside his priests and titleholders. The Jaga meanwhile burnt the churches and villages of the kingdom, massacred the inhabitants and dispersed the survivors to the remote mountains and deserts. Alvaro appealed to the Portuguese who dispatched 600 men to support the deposed mani Kongo and the new allies dispersed the Jaga in a year and a half due to the strength (and unfamiliar sound) of Portuguese musketry.

The scholar Joseph C. Miller questioned the veracity of the Pigafetta-Lopes account of an invasion; per Miller, the account more reflected the European imagination of who inhabited the interior of Africa rather than any credible fact. Per the Europeans, there was a vast empire of marauding, cannibalistic savages who lived in the interior and who produced vast armies of cruel and exceptional soldiers. The Portuguese maritime community, both merchants and missionaries, based in Kongo/Angola, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and Southeast Africa began attributing the various invasions (the Jaga or Imbangala in Kongo and Angola, the Galla in Ethiopia, the Mane in Sierra Leone and the ‘Zimba’ in Southeast Africa) they witnessed across Africa to this mythical nation of cannibalistic marauders.

This then would inspire the question, how could the Portuguese account for the vast distances these cannibal marauders operated? The answer to that question is geographical ignorance. The Portuguese vastly underestimated the distance between their coastal bases and believed that the domains of Abyssinia abutted against Kongo (that is, they believed that the interior of Africa was much smaller than it actually was). Per the Pigafetta-Lopes account, the Jaga originated near the first lake of the Nile in a province of the semi-mythical Monemugi Empire (which European geographers would place in the unknown African interior of their maps). Per the same account, the Jaga also lived on the borders of the mwene Mutapa Empire (in modern day Zimbabwe) and fought regularly with the latter. Ultimately, Miller notes, that the Jagas were less people and more of a literary device – a representation of everything antithetical to good Christian civilization (nomadic, bellicose, animalistic and cannibalistic) that arrived to deliver God’s wrath on the sinful civilized (such as the mani Kongo Alvaro mentioned above). As can be seen there is a religious element to this description and indeed missionary writing often used the Jaga and their supposed heathen practices as a counterpoint to the Christian civilization they wanted to spread.

But it should be noted that outside of the Portuguese and missionary accounts that there is little evidence for the existence of these Jaga. The Dutch would note that their sources regarding the Jaga came from the Portuguese. The oral tradition of Kongo makes no mention of a crisis in 1568 and naturally, the unrelated Imbangala people have an oral tradition that places their movements to the south of Kongo. If the Jaga didn’t exist per the arguments presented above, who then were repelled by the forces of Alvaro and the Portuguese? Per Miller, the mysterious enemies were domestic adversaries of the mani Kongo aided by allies from Makoko and Matamba; the ferocious invaders may have been a myth concocted by the Portuguese to justify their military intervention (it should be noted that Miller’s argument have found several critics such as John K. Thornton and Anne Hilton who offer their own identities for the Jaga invaders but, while interesting, it is not immediately relevant to the question and so omitted.)

As mentioned above, the Jaga from the 1568 invasion were conflated with the Imbangala who invaded Angola in the 17th century; the origin of these people and the timing of their arrival in Angola has also sparked much debate. One of the earliest sources on the Imbangala is the English sailor, Andrew Battell who spent 16 months traveling with the Imbangala from 1601 to 1602. His account yields a puzzling claim that the Imbangala came from Sierra Leone, moved through Kongo and reached Angola. It should be noted that Battell was employed on Portuguese vessels and was thus familiar with the myth of the cannibal super-empire of interior Africa that percolated through Portuguese maritime circles; this peculiar geography then might be a reference to said theory. An alternative explanation might be a simple editorial error. Battell’s account references a location known as the Mountains of the Lion (Sierra Leone) and Battell’s editor, Samuel Purchas might have conflated this with the Sierra Leone in West Africa. The Lion in this account requires some explanation as it is tied to the early history of the Imbangala. Per oral tradition, the Imbangala claim that they reached Angola under the rulership of a certain Kinguri who originated in the Lunda Empire (in modern day Katanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo). The title is derived from the word nguri or nguli which means lion in the Umbundu language, thus the Mountains of the Lion might be a reference to Kinguri’s origins.

Joseph C. Miller makes the case that Kinguri was not a historical personage but rather a position. The Lunda (among others) had a practice known as positional succession, where once an individual died, a successor from the same lineage would take the place of the deceased and assume their kinship ties and obligations, thus we may be dealing with several individuals who assumed the kinguri title and obligations over a span of time. Per Lunda oral tradition, the kinguri was displaced from the Lunda Empire after a succession dispute and left with his followers westward. The movement of the disaffected Lunda was blocked by two unknown kingdoms known as Kulembe and Libolo. The former kingdom was notable as it had a formidable warrior initiation society known as the kilombo. The kinguri was increasingly seen as a tyrant by his subordinates who then made common cause with the Kulembe and adopted the kilombo. This allowed the subordinates to overcome the kinguri and ‘kill’ him (i.e. abolish the title) sometime before 1563. With the adoption of the kilombo, the various amalgamation of people formerly under the kinguri became the Imbangala ; subsequently the Imbangala would move southwest (i.e. away from Kongo, giving them an alibi for the 1568 attack) and reach the coast of Angola where they would meet the Portuguese some time between 1563 and 1584. The two would then form an alliance around 1611. This alliance came at a fortunate time for the Portuguese as they were facing a manpower crisis and were caught between the Dutch on the coasts and the hostile and local Mbundu people in the interior. The partnership with the Imbangala allowed the Portuguese to force the surrender of the local Mbundu as well as generate record number of slaves for export. In 1618, the Portuguese fell out with the Imbangala and one of the leaders, Kulashingo left the coast of Angola for the interior and founded the Kingdom of Kasanje.

So who were the Jaga? If we were to listen to the missionaries and European sources like Lopes and Pigafetta, they were a representation of everything antithetical to Christian civilization. They were creatures that existed in the unknown interiors of Africa and emanated forth to disrupt the coastal civilizations the Portuguese interacted with as if they were some form of divine punishment. The Portuguese used this idea to conflate several invasions from the interior they were witnessing into one phenomenon, thus the Mane of Sierra Leone were bundled together with the Galla of Ethiopia on the other side of the continent. Several attacks on Southeast Africa were attributed to cannibalistic Zimba invaders regardless of the origin or motivation of the actual belligerents. Similarly, the conflict in Kongo and the unrelated depredations of the Imbangala mercenaries of the Portuguese were conflated together into the work of one people. Thus, the Jaga were Mane, Galla, Imbangala (i.e. actual peoples who were pursuing their own independent and unrelated goals through warfare) and also imaginary constructions of the Portuguese who were ignorant of the conditions in the interior of Africa.

Sources:

Hilton, Anne. “The Jaga Reconsidered.” The Journal of African History, vol. 22, no. 2, 1981, pp. 191–202.

Miller, Joseph C. “Requiem for the ‘Jaga’.” Cahiers d’Études Africaines, vol. 13, no. 49, 1973, pp. 121–149.

Miller, Joseph C. “The Imbangala and the Chronology of Early Central African History.” The Journal of African History, vol. 13, no. 4, 1972, pp. 549–574.

Thornton, John K. “A Resurrection for the Jaga.” Cahiers d’Études Africaines, vol. 18, no. 69, 1978, pp. 223–227.