Abstract
This article discusses the role of women as political actors in the region corresponding nowadays, roughly, to Mozambique, but also part of Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Based in the literature on the pre-colonial states and Portuguese archival sources, this article highlights how women participated actively in political structures, acting as counselors, ruling in the interregnum, assuming the leadership of groups and territories. The forms of political authority that women have developed in these societies, and that were extended to the colonial society, require further studies.
Keywords:
Female Rulers; Gender; Politics; History; East Africa
