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The Zimba and the Lundu State in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Matthew Schoffeleers
Matthew Schoffeleers
Affiliation:
Free University of Amsterdam
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Extract

This article is a partial answer to M. D. D. Newitt, who proposed that settled Maravi states were established only as a result of the rise of Muzura in the first half of the seventeenth century (cf. J. Afr. Hist., 1982, ii). Newitt thereby challenged the more orthodox view that a formal Maravi state system existed already by the middle of the sixteenth century, if not earlier. It is argued here that the orthodox view is still valid in the case of the Lundu state in the lower Shire valley, and perhaps also in the case of some of the neighbouring states. It is shown that around 1590 the then Lundu incumbent embarked on a course of strong state centralisation during which he appropriated the power of the traditional rain priests and thus became both the secular and the ritual leader of the country. It is also argued that this unusual degree of centralisation was achieved and could for a time be maintained with the help of the Zimba, an army of fugitives from the south bank of the Zambezi. However, the present article challenges Malawian historiographical orthodoxy on a very different point, by maintaining that Muzura is not to be identified with the Kalonga dynasty on the south-western shores of Lake Malawi, but with a separate state system in the western Shire Highlands, which gained prominence well before the Kalongas came to the fore.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , November 1987 , pp. 337 - 355
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

1 Lundu is both a positional title, comparable to ‘chief’ or ‘king’, and a dynastic name. We speak of ‘the Lundu’, when the title stands by itself, and of ‘Lundu’, when it is attached to a proper name.Google Scholar

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52 Schoffeleers, ‘Story of Mbona’, 251–2. The text was recorded during an interview with Mr Chapalapala, an elderly subsistence farmer from Misomali Village, Chapananga Chiefdom, Chikwawa District, on 31 August 1967.Google Scholar

53 This evidently happened after Lundu's military defeat in 1622. A more detailed discussion is to be found in Schoffeleers, ‘Ideological confrontation’ (forthcoming).Google Scholar

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55 The principal sources of the persecution theology referred to here are the Mbona myths. See Schoffeleers, ‘Oral history’, for a discussion.Google Scholar

56 Newitt, ‘Early history’, 161.Google Scholar

57 Newitt, Portuguese Settlement, 34–8.Google Scholar

58 Ibid., 37.

59 Bocarro, A., Decade, 388.Google Scholar

60 Gomes, ‘Viagem’, 180;Google ScholarBarreto, ‘Rivers of Cuama’, 475.Google Scholar

61 Newitt, Portuguese Settlement, 202.Google Scholar