Bringing an early-modern African queen into the limelight

A new four-part Netflix docuseries, “African Queens: Njinga,” tells the story of the 17th-century warrior Queen Njinga, who ruled over the territories of Ndongo and Matamba in present-day Angola. Cécile Fromont, a professor in the history of art in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, is one of a handful of scholars featured in the series who talk about Queen Njinga’s rule in the broader historical context of the Atlantic slave trade and European colonialism.