The Upper Zambezi Slave Trade, 1830–1907

Participation in the Atlantic slave trade reached the Upper Zambezi in the mid-eighteenth century, attained its peak in the 1830s and 1840s, and slowly died out between then and the turn of the century.^[16] In 1907 slaves in that part of the Upper Zambezi under British administration were officially freed by the new colonial administration but a system of debt slavery continued on a limited scale for decades.^[17] To understand the significance of this for Luvale ethnicity and tribal identity, as well as the importance of changes made in the chiefly system by later British administrators, one must understand the essentials of Luvale political succession. The Luvale are matrilineal and uxorilocal. Chieftainship is restricted to a single clan among some thirteen clans, the NamaKungu. All children of female chiefs are therefore chiefs (vamwangana ). A child of a male chief is called Mwana Uta or 'child of the bow'. He can never become a mwangana . This means that, depending on the number and fecundity of female chiefs, it was possible to have hundreds of Luvale chiefs at any one time. With very few exceptions, chiefly genealogies tend to be very shallow for obvious reasons. During the slave trade certain vamwangana were able to create important new chieftainships. These coexisted with older titles, and with the Kakenge, whose ancient chieftainship provided the necessary legitimizing historical links which each chief required to be accepted as a mwangana .^[18] This proliferation of chiefs with vastly varying degrees of actual authority was to confront the early colonial administration with the 'need' to create a clear hierarchy of political power and one which was small enough in number to be 'manageable'.

Because of their advantageous location on the plains which fall away from the Angolan highlands to the west, the Luvale were the first in the Upper Zambezi to receive Ovimbundu traders in search of export slaves. As a general rule the Ovimbundu were not interested in taking the slaves themselves, but preferred instead to buy them for guns, cloth and jewellery. I have discussed elsewhere the response of the Luvale NamaKungu chiefs to the opportunities offered them by the slave trade and the links between Luvale expansion, guns and slaves.^[19] By the mid-nineteenth century, when we have travellers' accounts describing the region, virtually all of the major chiefs were also important slave traders. Given the nature of Luvale chiefly succession, it is clear that those who were able to control the slave trade and the economic power and access to firearms which it represented were those who became some of the most important chiefs.

The idea of chiefs as entrepreneurs is certainly not original to this essay. But the opportunities of the time gave to Luvale chiefs, and, quite conceivably, chiefly pretenders, the possibility of establishing a unique economic/military position of unprecedented strength in their competition for lands and followers. It is clear that the system of domestic production was being augmented by elements of a new mercantile economy in ways which strengthened chiefs and created 'big men' able to take advantage of international trade. In terms of Luvale-Lunda relations, the relative Luvale monopoly of firearms and the aggressive, expansionist policy which Luvale chiefs were following meant that any defenceless group was subject to enslavement. Luvale traditions are quite explicit in stating that many Luvale—in addition to the Lunda—were enslaved, and sometimes by their own chiefs. The systematic and large-scale enslavement of Lunda people by Luvale chiefs and 'big men' was less an indication of some ancient ethnic animosity as it was an

acknowledgment, in a new situation moulded by mercantile capitalism, of the capabilities of the powerful over the powerless. Beginning in the 1890s, Luvale slaving parties, usually led by local chiefs or their agents, carried out a vigorous series of attacks against the Lunda which came to be known as the Wars of Ulamba.^[20] In an unprecedented request, the Lunda Chief Ishinde appealed to the Lozi Paramount, Lewanika, for help against the marauding Luvale. Lewanika, who undoubtedly saw an opportunity for expanding his influence, sent a military contingent against the offending Luvale chiefs which was defeated in 1892, Luvale military prowess finding an ally in disease among the Lozi.

After the retreat of the Lozi, the Luvale continued raiding the Lunda who fled ever deeper into the forests. It is likely that, had the demand for slaves continued, the Luvale would have decimated the Lunda, but the closure of the market, for which the Luvale were dependent upon the Ovimbundu, ended the Wars of Ulamba. It is still common, however, in the heat of modern politics, for Luvale partisans to recall the Wars of Ulamba as 'proof of their 'superiority' over the Lunda. It was these changes in the patterns of the Upper Zambezi's history which cast relations between Luvale and Lunda in terms of ethnic or tribal politics. However, the coming of colonial administration created even more serious—or at least more immediate—problems for both groups, and while the Wars of Ulamba helped to form each group's view of the other, opposition to certain British administrative policies required a temporary common front and cooperation.