ANTONIO DE OLIVEIRA CADORNEGA
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Antonio de Oliveira Cadornega was the chronicler of the seventeenth–century Angolan Wars. He arrived in Angola in 1639 as a soldier, and forty years later, as a settled veteran in Massangano. He wrote a three-volume history of the colony which he had helped to create.
The first volume describes the history of Portuguese settlement in Angola from the time of Paulo Dias de Novais until the Dutch conquest of Luanda. Cadornega likely gained his information from eyewitnesses to many of the events who retold their experiences to younger generations. He also had access to documents in the archives of Massangano although the main Luanda archives appear to have been destroyed by the Dutch in 1641 thus depriving Cadornega and all subsequent historians of the most valuable source material.
The second of Cadornega’s volumes deals with the history of Angola from the Luso-Brazilian reconquest in 1648 until 1680, a period during which the author himself played an important role in the affairs of the country.
Finally the third and last volume gives a detailed description of the country and its peoples. In some ways, this is perhaps the most useful section and gives descriptions of the Kingdom of Kasanje and of its origins and customs, accounts of the dynasties of Ndongo and Kongo, an index of all the major figures, both European and African, involved in the Angolan Wars and much other first-hand material.
The three volumes were written in 1680 and edited and published in 1940-42 by Jose Matias Delgado and Manuel Alves de Cunha.
DAVID BIRMINGHAM
