The clans of the south-east African coastal plain — Ronga around Delagoa Bay (Tembe, Maputju, Mpfumu, Manyisa), Djonga, Bila, Hlanganu, Nwalungu and the far-spread Hlengwe — sharing a language but never a single state. Their chiefs traded ivory and later cattle with Portuguese and Dutch shipping at Delagoa Bay from the 16th century; from the 1820s most were subjugated by Soshangane's Nguni Gaza kingdom, which gave them the outsider name Shangaan.
Not an ending: the Ronga-Portuguese war of 1894 and the Portuguese destruction of Gaza in 1895 ended independent chiefly power on the coastal plain, and the Tsonga were divided between Portuguese East Africa and the Transvaal. Xitsonga is an official language of South Africa today.
The classic two-volume Thonga ethnography, opening with a chapter that geographically delimits the tribe and lists every clan group by river.
The modern history of the Tsonga-speaking south-east, including how the 'Tsonga/Shangaan' identity was made by Gaza rule, Portuguese conquest and migrant labour.