100 Nasty Women of History

by Hannah Jewell

  She eventually moved to Canada with her husband, who was also her cousin, ’cause why not keep it in the family? She died at age 92 in 1971, a surprisingly old age for someone who gave as few fucks as she.

  59

  Lotfia Elnadi

  1907–2002

  Listen, I know there’s lots of gals flying planes in these pages, but I just still don’t understand how planes stay up and am too impressed with the women who not only worked it out but did it for themselves. So here’s one more.

  Lotfia Elnadi was born in Cairo in 1907. As a young woman, she read about a new local flight school and knew it was for her. She learned to fly in just 67 days, paying her fees by working as a secretary at the school, and became the first woman in Africa and the Middle East to get a pilot’s licence. Her dad was mad at first, as she had told him she was just off to a study group twice a week – that classic excuse that most people use to go snog their teenage boyfriends and girlfriends – when she was in fact off to flight school. He soon got over it, however, when he saw the worldwide acclaim she received.

  When she was in her 80s, Lotfia told an interviewer for the aviation magazine Ninety-Nine News: Magazine of the International Women Pilots about her first, much-publicised solo flight in 1933 in a Gypsy Moth, an open-air biplane: ‘I not only flew to circle the pyramids in the Egyptian desert, I dipped my wings to fly between them! I was a show-off, was I not?’ Look, if you knew how to do that you’d be an idiot not to be a show-off. And luckily she was a skilled flyer, because it would have been pretty awkward to put a dent in your country’s most precious landmark.

  ‘It was such a feeling of freedom,’ Lotfia explained. ‘The Moth, with its open cockpit, meant that the wind blew around my face. I flew for the sheer pleasure of it,’ she said, much in the same way that people fly Ryanair today: for the sheer pleasure of it. The first person she ever flew was her father. Afterwards he said, ‘he’d been frightened, but then he decided that he was in the hands of his daughter,’ Lotfia recalled. ‘He knew that if we crashed, we would crash together, so he relaxed and began to enjoy the flight.’ Sure, that would be reassuring, in a way. Maybe?

  Lotfia became a national celebrity, flying all across the country and up and down the Nile. She once had to make an emergency landing in the middle of the desert after an engine failure. She was found by some Bedouins who lent her a mule to take in search of help. She eventually had to quit flying due to an injury, but not before winning medals and honours as the first lady of the Egyptian skies.

  Yes, there have been lots of pilots among these women. But there’s something wonderfully alluring about their symbolism, fighting against sexism and stereotype to gain the skills to literally fly off the face of this hell earth and take their lives into their own hands. Ladies, we must all learn to fly before we can be truly independent. I will see you all at flight school – tell your parents you’re off to a ‘study group’, it works every time.

  Women who fought empires and racists

  60

  Queen Nanny of the Maroons

  c. 1686–1755

  Sometimes it’s difficult to find out very much about a woman’s life from hundreds of years ago, particularly when the historical references we have about her were written by racist men whose asses she roundly kicked. So it is with Queen Nanny of the Windward Maroons. Most written references to this incredible Jamaican leader’s life were recorded by the British colonial soldiers whom she fought in the early 18th century. There is however enough oral history to add to dodgy British records, so that we can learn more about the excellent Queen Nanny.

  Jamaica was settled by the Spanish in 1509, soon after its ‘discovery’ in 1494 by one of the absolute shittest men of history, Christopher Columbus. In the 150 years following his arrival, the native Arawak people were nearly completely wiped out by the colonisers, who meanwhile began to bring enslaved people from West Africa to the island. When the British invaded Jamaica to take it from the Spanish in 1655, most Spaniards left to Cuba and elsewhere, disappointed that the island didn’t have gold anyway. In the struggle between the two colonial powers, the people the Spanish settlers had enslaved escaped to their freedom in the mountains and forests of Jamaica. A ‘Maroon’ is a word first used by the British in the 1730s to describe these communities of free and escaped slaves.

  The free Maroons survived by living off the land as well as raiding the plantations run by the British, who’d come to Jamaica for a pleasant colonial experience of slavery and exploitation only to have their weapons, food, and livestock disappear in the night. The presence of the Maroons inspired and assisted uprisings and desertions from these huge, brutal sugar plantations – and nothing inspired a slave revolt like the example of successful revolts at the plantations next door. The escapees went to join the free Maroons, and so the community grew.

  British officials had to keep writing back to England that things weren’t going very well, and that the Maroons ‘are like to prove as thorns and pricks in our sides’. One British governor, D’Oyley, who was oily, tried to get the Maroons to stop their raids by offering them 20 acres a person (of the land which they already lived on) as well as their freedom (which they had already claimed for themselves). Some white settlers just gave up and left the island altogether, though most stayed, bringing hundreds of thousands more enslaved people to Jamaica for more than another century. The community of Windward Maroons, who lived on the Eastern side of the island, however, successfully kept their freedom and fought off the British – at the time the most powerful empire in the world – for 83 years. Queen Nanny was one of their most important military and political leaders.

  Nanny was born in the 1680s in the Asante Empire, present-day Ghana, and was likely transported to Jamaica as a free person, or became free soon after arriving. One British soldier who may have encountered her, Captain Philip Thicknesse, who was thick, claimed he’d seen her wearing a girdle of knives around her waist, ‘many of which I have no doubt had been plunged in human flesh and blood.’ Was it her? It’s not clear. He also called her an ‘old Hagg’, so he’s probably not to be trusted on anything to do with women.

  Nevertheless, Nanny’s achievements are remembered in oral history, Thicknesse or no.

  Firstly, as a military tactician, Nanny instructed her fighters in the proper use of the abeng, or cow horn. Using a secret code system, the Maroons could relay complex information across long distances. These messages, passed from hill to hill, meant the Maroons could prepare for a British attack a full six hours in advance, as they slowly approached, unable to communicate over distances, crashing through the forest in bright red coats like an obvious horde of twats.

  Once those twats arrived, they faced another disadvantage: a town built with a single narrow entrance, so that no matter how large the number of British troops, they had to enter battle single file, like a queue of pricks tutting at each other in Waitrose. Nanny had also devised systems of camouflage so effective that a British soldier might go to hang his coat on a tree, only for that tree to turn out to be a fighter about to kill him. Camouflage, good construction, and long-range communication were only three of Nanny’s devices in her defensive strategy.

  In the end, the Windward Maroons signed a treaty with the British in exchange for a grant of land and the right to be left the fuck alone (to this day!). It’s a remarkable example of resistance, if only in one small community, on an island that felt the full force of British colonial evils.

  A final legend about Nanny said that she could catch bullets. It’s said that at the treaty signing with the British, Nanny caught bullets out of the air and said, ‘Take these, good friend, there is peace; so now I am free to show you that only one man’s bullets can harm Nanny’ – pointing at heaven to indicate which Man. If you’re boring and want another theory to explain this legend, it could be that Nanny would recycle bullets, which is much less cool but definitely practical.

  In any case, today in Moore Town, residents leave glasses of w
ater for Nanny at her memorial, and still use the phrase, whenever someone starts acting up: ‘Granny Nanny didn’t catch bullets for you alone.’

  61

  Njinga of Angola

  c. 1583–1663

  Njinga (which can also be spelled Nzinga) was the queen of Ngongo and Matamba, in what is now Angola, southern Africa, and I’ll say it once more: there is no reason for you to never have heard of this incredible shining powerful queen of history. No non-racist reason anyway. European chroniclers and other enemies in the 17th century vilified her as a bloodthirsty tyrant, which is funny, because they were busy being fucking slave-trading fucks, weren’t they? Also, sorry but who the fuck wasn’t a tyrant in the 1600s?

  But listen. Njinga was such a boss, where do we start? Her birth. She was born in 1583, and from her childhood, Njinga was trained by her father, the ngola (ruler), in the art of governing and war, alongside her brother, Mbandi. When her brother became the new ruler, Njinga left the kingdom as she was seen as his rival and they didn’t really get on. In fact, it’s possible she killed him in the end, but that may just be a rumour spread by her enemies. Everyone knows how enemies love to spread rumours, it’s their favourite thing to do.

  Before he died (RIP) Mbandi got his sister to return and act as his envoy to the Portuguese, who were in the area and up to no good. He wanted her to negotiate a peace treaty of sorts with them that would ensure Ngongo’s independence. Njinga was like, ‘Sure bro,’ and in 1622 went to negotiate with the Portuguese governor and live out one of her all-time most iconic moments. She arrived bedecked in clothes and jewels and attended by her ladies-in-waiting, to find that the Portuguese motherfucker, who sat in a velvet-covered, gold-embroidered chair, had only arranged for some carpet for Njinga to sit on at his feet.

  Given that Portugal’s goal was for Ngongo to submit to them entirely, Njinga clocked that this was not a good look, especially for a future queen. She immediately gestured to one of her attendants to get on all fours and be her chair for the several hours of negotiation. The move had the intended effect. They hammered out a peace treaty to maintain Ngongo’s independence, which the Portuguese of course did not honour, and carried on looting Ngongo’s territory and raiding its villages and enslaving people. Njinga had, however, refused to submit Ngongo to Portuguese rule.

  One concession Njinga did make to the Portuguese was also a savvy diplomatic move: she was baptised and converted to Catholicism. The Portuguese goals in the region were twofold: to recruit new Christians and to kidnap people into slavery to be transported to the Americas, as Jesus clearly instructs all good Christians to do. If Njinga could say she was a fellow Catholic, she had recourse directly to Rome for political support against the Portuguese. Did she truly ‘mean’ her conversion? That’s between Njinga and God, leave them alone.

  Speaking of things that are between Njinga and God, she *may* have had a hand in killing her brother, but also he may have wanted to commit suicide. Also she may have killed his son. Who’s to say who did and didn’t kill whom? Whatever, their beef went way back. The point is, Njinga was elected queen by the court, and successfully kept the independence of the Ngongo and then the Matamba kingdoms against the Portuguese, and more or less maintained power for herself from 1646 until her death in 1663. Even in old age, she led fighters in skirmishes with the Portuguese. Basically the Portuguese had a terrible time as long as she was in charge. She reconquered lands from them, and the people they had enslaved escaped to her territory. She made alliances with the Dutch and the Kingdom of Kongo to keep the Portuguese out, and was accepted as an official Christian ruler by the Pope, making things awkward for the Portuguese.

  Let’s discuss Njinga as queen. She would occasionally dress as a man and was, like so many, a fan of young men and women, romantically speaking, and so naturally kept herself a sort of harem. It had to go in one of her negotiations however, since as a good Catholic she was compelled to give up her concubines and pick one to marry. Ugh, fine. So she picked a hot, significantly younger man, and married him.

  Her death took her people by surprise. She was one of those people everyone just assumed would never die, like my grandma. Her legend lives on, however, in Angola and also in those places some of her people had been transported to as slaves; in Brazil, Cuba, and even the US – as some of the enslaved people first brought to Virginia had been captured by British pirates from Portuguese traders who had originally taken them from Njinga’s Ngongo.

  So should you ever find yourself thinking about queens in history, don’t only think of Queen Elizabeth I or Queen Victoria – remember the reign of Queen Njinga.

  62

  Rani Chennamma

  1778–1829

  Chennamma was the Rani (queen) of Kittur, in southern India, in the 18th to 19th centuries. When she was a girl, she received training in the things all little girls must be educated in to this day: how to ride a horse, how to shoot an arrow through the chest of your enemy, and failing that, how to destroy him in a swordfight. All of these skills would come in handy over the course of her life.

  When Rani Chennamma’s young son died, the British came along and tried to take control of Kittur. She tried to adopt an heir to carry on her husband’s line of succession, but the British said it was not legal, according to some BS laws they’d just made up. In fact, these were the laws that the British would use again and again to dispossess rightful rulers across India, until the shit really hit the fan, as we’ll see in Rani of Jhansi’s chapter.

  The British tried to expel Rani Chennamma, as well as her adopted son. She was like, ‘Fuck this,’ and attempted to keep Kittur independent. She went to war with the British, who attacked with 200 of their men and attempted to confiscate the state’s jewels. See, this is why all daughters must be taught to wield a sword and use a bow and arrow: Rani Chennamma was ready. Her forces killed the British collector and took other officers hostage. What did they expect, honestly? She agreed to release them on the understanding that it would lead to peace; however, the British, never known for keeping their word about literally anything, regrouped with more forces and continued the fight.

  When Rani Chennamma was captured and killed, her lieutenant carried on fighting until he was also captured and killed. She was the first (but not the last) female leader to take up arms against British colonialism. Her legacy of telling the British to fuck off, with her words as well as her actions, would soon be taken up by our next lovely warrior, Rani of Jhansi.

  63

  Lakshmibai, Rani of Jhansi

  1828–1858

  Lakshmibai, also known as the Rani of Jhansi, is probably the most famous Indian woman who resisted British colonialism in India, though certainly not the first one, as we’ve already seen. She is often depicted as she spent much of her life: riding a horse, resplendent in jewels, and wielding a large sword.

  When Lakshmibai’s husband, the Maharaja, died in 1853, the state of Jhansi was under threat of British annexation. The British Governor-General of colonial India at the time, the Marquess of Dalhousie, a posh prick, had instituted something called the Doctrine of Lapse. This was basically the formalised version of the same law used to fuck over Rani Chennamma in the previous chapter. What it meant was that if the ruler of an independent Indian state died without an heir, the British could just have it (though many of these princely states were already British puppets). Before Lakshmibai’s husband died he had adopted a son, Damodar Rao, and insisted to the British that he was the rightful heir and that Lakshmibai should rule until he came of age.

  Dalhousie, though, saw an opportunity and refused to recognise Damodar Rao’s adoption, annexing Jhansi, collecting the profits of its land, and evicting Laxmibai from the palace. She was furious. Jhansi had long been friendly with the British, autonomous but loyal. And so with this in mind, Lakshmibai hired an eccentric Australian lawyer, John Lang, and the two talked from 6pm till 2am one evening in 1854 to draw up an appeal to the ruling according to multiple treaties that had b
een previously signed between the British and Jhansi. The lawyer later described the most important thing about their collaboration, Lakshmibai’s appearance: ‘Her face must have been very handsome when she was younger, and even now it has many charms – though according to my idea of beauty, it was too round.’ Shut the fuck up and get back to your lawyering, John.

  Dalhousie, being a prick, rejected the appeal, and Lakshmibai railed against the ‘gross violation and negation of British faith and honour.’ Jhansi officially lapsed to the British in 1854, as British rule in India grew ever more autocratic and dismissive of local religions and customs. After decades of oppression, tensions mounted and the last straw came in 1857 when a rumour spread that the bullets for a new kind of rifle to be used in the Indian army, whose use required the soldier to bite them, were coated in cow and pig fat, offending Hindu and Muslim soldiers alike. The British did not expect ‘loyal’ troops would ever rebel, but they did, breaking out in what is now known as the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

  Lakshmibai was primarily concerned with the autonomy of Jhansi above all else, and even as the fighting spread she attempted to find diplomatic arrangements with the British. She built up the city’s defences and recruited an army of 15,000 soldiers, which she originally meant to do on behalf of the British against the rebels. In the chaos of the uprising, though, she had been left once again with autonomy over Jhansi, and the city and its queen both saw the potential to claim independence once more. So she hoarded food and munitions, and even had the land surrounding her fort cleared of trees so that if and when the British came, they would be roasted in the sun, like so many British pensioners in Spain. She began dressing as a warrior, but still adorned herself with diamonds and pearls, because she was a queen, after all.