Nzinga queen of Ndongo and Matamba | One of the great women rulers of Africa | fought against the slave trade and European influence in the seventeenth century.
Nzinga queen of Ndongo and Matamba fought against the slave trade and European influence in the seventeenth century. The Roman Catholic Church split the world in half in the 15th century, giving Portugal a trade monopoly in West Africa and Spain the right to conquer the New World in search of land and wealth. The Romanus Pontifex of 1455, issued by Pope Nicholas V, bolstered Portuguese efforts and affirmed Portugal's exclusive rights to the regions it claimed along the West African coast, as well as the trade from those areas. It gave the authority to invade, plunder, and "enslave their persons indefinitely." To boost her wealth, Queen Isabella financed in Christopher Columbus' voyage and eventually opposed the enslavement of Native Americans, stating that they were Spanish subjects. Spain developed an asiento, or contract, that allowed captured Africans to be shipped directly to Spanish colonies in the Americas for trade as human commodities. Other European nation-