Jaggas

Jaggas lies in the Kwango country on the eastern margin of the Kingdom of Kongo, where open woodland and river valleys meet the grasslands beyond. Farming villages grew cassava and millet, kept goats and fowl, and traded salt and iron with neighbours. Paths linked the riverside settlements to the markets of the Kongo heartland to the west.

The name Jaga entered European writing through the upheavals of the late sixteenth century. In 1568, armed newcomers drove King Álvaro I from his capital, and the Italian writer Filippo Pigafetta, drawing on the Portuguese traveller Duarte Lopes, later published an account in 1591 of the Portuguese troops who helped restore the king. The Jaga raids struck the eastern provinces hard, and for generations afterwards Kongo's rulers faced pressure from raiders and rebels on their borders.