From Angola and China, transmasc military leaders with polycules
17th c. monarch Ngola Nzinga and 10th c. general Baixiangya
Baixiangya (White Necked Crow) and Ngola Nzinga may or may not have chosen to identify as “polyamorous androphile trans men” if they lived in our times. But in their lifetimes, both chose to present as men, both were strong military leaders with a loyal following of cis men, and both had entourages of men said to be their auxiliary spouses.
Ngola Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba
Ngola (‘monarch’) Nzinga, elevated in modern Angola as a national hero[1], was born into the royal house of the Mbundu[i] kingdom of Ndongo around 1583. Before e inherited the throne from eir brother Ngola Mbandi, Prince(ss) Nzinga was already known as an able warrior and astute politician who fought and governed alongside eir father Ngola Kilombo. In 1621, Prince(ss) Nzinga was appointed by eir brother the king as his emissary to the Portuguese.
Following eir brother’s death in 1624, Prince(ss) Nzinga ascended the throne of Ndongo. E invaded and took over the neighboring state of Matamba whose queen e deposed and whose princess e inducted into eir army.[2] Ngola Nzinga ruled until eir natural death in 1663. Through eir long military and political career, Ngola Nzinga engaged in warfare and diplomacy with the Portuguese and made alliances with the militarily sophisticated Imbangala, staving off outsiders’ attempts to control eir kingdoms.[3]
Ngola Nzinga’s transgender presentation and queer relationships were described in a 1668 secondhand account by Olfert Dapper, a Dutch geographer who never went to Africa but was working with trade accounts from the Dutch West India Company:
[E] dresses these fifty to sixty strong and beautiful young men in female garment, according to [eir] habit, and dresses [eirself] as a man. [E] calls these men women and [emself] a man. The cross-dressed young men are said to be [eir auxiliary spouses].[4]
According to history professor and award-winning author Linda Heywood, Ngola Nzinga’s gender transition occurred in the 1630s, when e took on masculine clothing and terms of address, ordering eir male auxiliary spouses to dress in women’s clothing.[5] Ngola Nzinga would be around 50 years of age at the time of eir transition.
There are some rather sensational accounts about how Ngola Nzinga treated eir human resources that should probably be taken with a grain of salt, considering that the European sources probably had their own cultural biases/ideological agenda.
Arguably, a similar lens can be applied to accounts of the personal life of Baixiangya (White-Necked Crow), a 10th c. Chinese trans masculine military leader who was active at the beginning of the Liao dynasty in northern China.
Baixiangya (White-Necked Crow) of Liao
In the previous post, you already read 10th c. civil servant Wang Renyu’s account of how Baixiangya confidently negotiated with the region’s new Khitan ruler for xir own career advancement from a local bandit commander to an officially appointed general.
Wang Renyu, a contemporary of Baixiangya, flatly stated his discomfort with an AFAB person wielding military power, even if that person is an ambidextrous mounted archer with proficiency in multiple weapons and whose “name, attire, and gestures … were that of a man”. His description of Baixiangya’s married life as that of a murderous serial marrier should probably not be accepted uncritically.
Another account of Baixiangya’s professional and personal life appears in Jishu (Book of Agitation) by prolific 17th c. writer He Yisun, who survived the chaos of the transition between the Ming and Qing dynasties:
During the time of Khitan rule[ii], there was a woman of Chenzhou with the nickname of White-Necked Crow, who was skilled in military matters. Xir was appointed General of Huaihua and had a hundred male attendants. These hundred men were known to be the general’s auxiliary spouses. These hundred men did not officially hold the status of auxiliary spouse. Their job title was ’male attendant’, but they could not dissociate themselves from the reputation of being auxiliary spouses. [6]
Why we are not using the word “harem” to describe White-Necked Crow’s and Ngola Nzinga’s multiple consorts
The common English understanding of “harem” as a type of polycule centered on one socially dominant sexual or romantic partner, typically a group of women revolving around a male partner, is a gross distortion on the original meaning of the word. According to Myth and Reality of the Ottoman Harem | ICRAA, the word, which is derived from the Arabic root h-r-m, refers to a space to which access is controlled, such as a sacred place or the private living quarters of a family. The private living space of a monogamous household, where one wife and one husband reside with their children, and where unrelated men do not enter, is a harem. A holy site or religious sanctuary is also a harem.
For other contexts in which the use of the word “harem” is problematic, see Bharj and Hegarty: A Postcolonial Feminist Critique of Harem Analogies in Psychological Science:
“Since the 1930s, psychologists have used the term harem as an analogy for social relations among animals. In doing so they draw upon gendered and racial stereotypes located in the history of colonialism.”
Why we are not using the word “concubine” to describe White-Necked Crow’s and Queen Nzinga’s consorts
You might have noticed the substitution of a word or two in the Dapper quote regarding Ngola Nzinga. Yes, we replaced the word “concubine” in the original text with “auxiliary spouses”.
According to Collins English Dictionary, the Latin root of “concubine” means “to lie with”, which flattens the role of the individual in that relationship to one of “bed partner” and nothing more. Historically, many people who would be described in English as “concubines” did a lot more than just lie with their partner. Madam Zhang, an auxiliary wife of the 18th c. pansexual polymath Bi Yuan, was a published poet like her husband. Bülbül Hatun, a consort of Sultan Bayezid II of the late 15th c./early 16th c. Ottoman Empire, built schools, mosques and a soup kitchen.
Just because some pre-modern polycule members didn’t have a marriage certificate or a formal wedding ceremony signaling their status as a legal/principal spouse doesn’t mean that these polycule members functioned solely or even primarily as sex objects to their higher-status partner. The soldiers of women’s army of Dahomey were recognized as lower-ranked wives of the King, but the vast majority these elite soldiers did not have conjugal relations with their official husband.
Sources:
[1] Ribeiro, Orquidea & Torres Moreira, Fernando Alberto & Pimenta, Susana. (2019). Nzinga Mbandi: From Story to Myth. Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts. 11. 51-60. 10.7559/citarj.v11i1.594.
[2] Heywood, Linda M.. Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warrior Queen, 126. Harvard University Press, 2017
[3] Miller, Joseph C. “Nzinga of Matamba in a New Perspective.” The Journal of African History 16, no. 2 (1975): 201–16. http://www.jstor.org/stable/180812.
[4] Bleys, Rudi C.. The Geography of Perversion: Male-to-Male Sexual Behaviour outside the West and the Ethnographic Imagination, 1750-1918, 33. New York: New York University Press. 1996
[5] Heywood, Linda M.. Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warrior Queen, 127. Harvard University Press, 2017
[6] 疑阳 section in Chapter 1 of Jishu
Notes:
[i] The Mbundu people are Angola’s second largest ethnic group, comprising about 25% of the population. Their traditional territory includes the present-day capital of Luanda. Agostinho Neto, the doctor who led Angola’s struggle for independence from Portugal and became the first president of Angola, was of Mbundu descent.
[ii] The Liao dynasty (916–1125) was founded by members of the Khitan ethnic group.