The history of Portuguese presence on the territory of contemporary Angola lasted from the arrival of the
explorer Diogo Cão in 1484 until the
decolonization of the territory in November 1975. Over these five centuries, several different situations existed.
Colony, 1575–1951 in peace negotiations with the Portuguese governor in
Luanda in 1657 When in 1484,
Diogo Cão and other explorers reached the
Kongo Kingdom at the end of the 15th century, its present territory comprised a number of separate peoples, some organized as kingdoms or tribal federations of varying sizes. The Portuguese were interested in trade, principally in
slave trade. They therefore maintained a peaceful and mutually profitable relationship with the rulers and nobles of the Kongo Kingdom. Kings such as
João I and
Afonso I studied Christianity and learned
Portuguese, in turn
Christianising their nation and sharing the benefits from the slave trade. The Portuguese established small trading posts on the lower
Congo, in the area of the present
Democratic Republic. A more important trading settlement on the Atlantic coast was erected at
Soyo in the territory of the Kongo Kingdom. It is now Angola's northernmost town, apart from the
Cabinda exclave. In 1575, the Portuguese established the settlement of
Luanda on the coast south of the Kongo Kingdom. In the 17th century came the settlement of
Benguela even farther to the south. Between 1580 and the 1820s, well over a million people from present-day Angola were exported as slaves to the
New World, mainly to
Brazil, but also to North America. According to Oliver and Atmore, "for 200 years, the colony of Angola developed essentially as a gigantic slave-trading enterprise". Angola was very closely linked both economically and socially to Brazil via the notorious "middle passage" of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. A
mestiço (mixed race people) elite emerged in Luanda by the early 17th century whose principle source of wealth was facilitating the purchase of Africans from the interior of what is now modern Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to export as slaves to Brazil. The majority of those enslaved were taken captive by their fellow Africans usually in wars and/or raids and sold to the merchants of Luanda.
Portuguese sailors, explorers, soldiers and merchants had a long-standing policy of conquest and establishment of military and trading outposts in Africa with
the conquest of Muslim-ruled Ceuta in 1415 and the establishment of bases in present-day
Morocco and the
Gulf of Guinea. The Portuguese had
Catholic beliefs and their military expeditions included from the very beginning the
conversion of foreign peoples. Angola was governed in a highly militaristic style. One Portuguese author, E. Silva Correia in his 1782 book,
Histdria de Angola wrote: "In no part of the Portuguese world is militia [an army] more necessary than in Angola." In 1867, the governor of Angola, Calheiros e Menezes wrote in his book
Relatdrio do Governador Geral da Provincia de Angola, 1867 wrote "the normal condition of the administration of this colony is to make war, and to prepare itself for war." Most notably, every single Captain-General (renamed as Governor-General in 1836) was a serving army or naval officer. Generally, the Portuguese Army had about 2,000 European soldiers in Angola at any given moment from the 16th century into the 20th century. The Portuguese forces were backed up by the so-called
guerra preta ("black war") of African troops who numbered between 5,000 to 20,000. The
guerra preta were raised by loyal African
sobas (chiefs) and were sometimes provided with uniforms and salaries. Service in Angola was unpopular in the Portuguese Army and it was rare for a first-rate officer to be stationed in Angola. It was only during the final campaigns of conquest between 1890 and 1920 that the officers considered to be first-rate were stationed in Angola on a regular basis, and before then Angola was widely considered to be the place where the second-rate officers unfit for promotion were sent to. Most of the Portuguese troops in Angola were
degredados (criminals sent to Angola to ease the problems of prison overcrowding), deserters who likewise been sent to Angola as a punishment, and various adventurers. The rate of pay for service in Angola was the same as in Portugal, which did not inspire many to volunteer for Angola. Service in Angola was deeply unpopular as the costs of living was twice that in Portugal; the death rate from diseases was very high; many of the soldiers felt isolated out in the bush; and there were frequent complaints that the Africans did not welcome the Portuguese. In the 17th century, conflicting economic interests led to a military confrontation with the
Kongo Kingdom. Portugal defeated the Kongo Kingdom in the
Battle of Mbwila on 29 October, 1665, but suffered a disastrous defeat at the
Battle of Kitombo when they tried to invade Kongo in 1670. Control of most of the central highlands was achieved in the 18th century. Further reaching attempts at conquering the interior were undertaken in the 19th century. However, full Portuguese administrative control of the entire territory was not achieved until the beginning of the 20th century. Due to the colony stretching into the interior, there was substantial admixture between Africans and Portuguese settlers, creating
Afro-Portuguese communities called "
Ambaquista" (or "Mbakista"), named after the town of
Mbaka founded in 1618. The abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the 19th century badly damaged Angola's economy. The
mestiço elite who had grown wealthy on the slave trade saw a serious fall in their social status as their principle source of income no longer existed. It was only in the 19th century with the "Scramble for Africa" that the Portuguese began to push seriously into regions in the interior of Angola that they had ignored until then, largely out of the fear that other European powers might annex the interior before Portugal did. In 1884, the
United Kingdom, which up to that time refused to acknowledge that Portugal possessed territorial rights north of
Ambriz, concluded a treaty recognising Portuguese sovereignty over both banks of the lower Congo. However, the treaty, meeting with opposition there and in
Germany, was not ratified. Agreements concluded with the
Congo Free State, the German Empire and
France in 1885–1886 fixed the limits of the province, except in the south-east, where the frontier between
Barotseland (
north-west Rhodesia) and Angola was determined by the
Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1891 and the arbitration award of King
Victor Emmanuel III of Italy in 1905. During the period of Portuguese colonial rule of Angola, cities, towns and trading posts were founded, railways were opened (notably the
Benguela Railway), ports were built, and a
Westernised society was being gradually developed. The Portuguese pointed to the Ambaquista to justify their colonial claims in line with their "
civilising mission". The Portuguese forces numbered around 10,000 and included
Damara,
Herero, and
Afrikaner irregulars. Portuguese forces terrorized the local population, massacring them and burning down their villages. They also aggravated the ongoing famine by requisitioning food, taxation and forced conscription. A 2026 study described the Portuguese campaign against the Ovambo as
genocide. During the war, the population of southern Angola fell by at least one quarter, mostly due to immigration to South West Africa. Prior to the 1950s, the number of Portuguese settlers in Angola was relatively small with the 1950 census listing only 80,000 people living in Angola as white. The policy of the Portuguese government was to discourage Portuguese settlers in Angola least Angola become a "new Brazil" that would demand independence just as the Portuguese colony of Brazil had won its independence in the 19th century. However, after the degree upgrading Angola from being a colony to being an overseas province of Portugal in 1951, the
Estado Novo regime started to encourage a massive number of Portuguese settlers to move to Angola in order to prove that Angola was really an overseas province. By 1973, there were 324,000 Portuguese settlers living in Angola who dominated the economic life of the colony, owning almost all of the businesses as well as dominating all of the professions. The number of Portuguese settlers were 9,000 in 1900, 12,000 in 1910, 20,700 in 1920, 30,000 in 1930, 40,000 in 1940, 80,000 in 1950, 172,000 in 1960 and 290,000 in 1970. By 1974, of the six million people living in Angola, 5% (335,000) were settlers, giving Angola the second largest white population in Africa after South Africa. The white settler population in Angola outnumbered those of Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) which had a white population of 275,000, Portuguese East Africa (modern Mozambique), which a white population of 180,000 and Kenya, which had a white population of 50,000. The arrival of the settlers started an economic boom, but at the same time, it sparked massive resentment from the indigenous African population who were greatly angered at the way that
Estado Novo regime blatantly favored the interests of the settlers over their interests. The fact that the
Estado Novo provided for schools for the children of the settlers while providing almost no educational opportunities for the African population outraged the black Angolans who complained about being treated as second-class citizens in their own land. Most of the settlers lived in urban areas and were relatively unaffected by the war for independence until the early 1970s, which explained why the war did not halt the movements of settlers into Angola in the 1960s, who continued to pour into Angola. The Portuguese settlers in Angola came from the poorer classes and most could not afford to return to Portugal even if they wanted to. Most of the settlers in urban areas tended to work menial positions such as street sweepers, taxi drivers, waiters, market women, and so forth. The poverty of most of the Portuguese settlers led for them to press to have certain menial occupations such as working as taxi drivers reserved for them, which caused much resentment from the
mestiços and even more so the Africans who found themselves excluded from these occupations. However, the settlers also dominated the business life of Angola and owned almost all of the coffee plantations as well as providing most of the lower and middle-ranking civil servants. The general attitude of the settlers was that Angola was "a white man's country" and that they had come to found "a second Brazil" or a "New Lusitania". The society that existed in Angola in the 1950s was described as one characterised by "extreme racism" with a rigid social hierarchy with the whites on the top; the
mestiços (mixed race people) below the whites; the
assimilados (those Africans who had embraced the Portuguese language and culture) below the whites and the
mestiços; and finally the unassimilated African population at the bottom. There was some tension between the
Estado Novo regime, which saw Angola as an overseas province vs. the settlers who expected that Angola would eventually evolve into "a second Brazil", namely become an independent nation under their leadership.
Overseas province, 1951–1971 beginning of the colonial war In 1951, the Portuguese Colony of Angola became an
overseas province of Portugal. In the late 1950s the
National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (
MPLA) began to organize strategies and action plans to fight Portuguese rule and the remunerated system which affected many of the native African people from the countryside, who were relocated from their homes and made to perform compulsory work, almost always unskilled hard labour, in an environment of
economic boom. Organised
guerrilla warfare began in 1961, the same year that a law was passed to improve the working conditions of the largely unskilled native workforce, which was demanding more rights. In 1961, the Portuguese government indeed abolished a number of basic legal provisions which discriminated against black people, like the
Estatuto do Indigenato (Decree-Law 43: 893 of 6 September 1961). However, the conflict, conversely known as the
Colonial War or the War of Liberation, erupted in the north of the territory when
UPA rebels based in
Republic of the Congo massacred both white and black civilians in surprise attacks in the countryside. After visiting the
United Nations, rebel leader
Holden Roberto returned to
Kinshasa and organised
Bakongo militants. Holden Roberto launched an incursion into Angola on 15 March 1961, leading 4,000 to 5,000 militants. His forces took farms, government outposts, and trading centres, killing everyone they encountered. At least 1,000 whites and an unknown number of blacks were killed. Commenting on the incursion, Roberto said, "this time the slaves did not cower". They massacred everything. The effective military in Angola were composed of approximately 6,500 men: 5,000 black Africans and 1,500 white Europeans sent from Portugal. After these events the Portuguese government, under the
dictatorial Estado Novo regime of
António de Oliveira Salazar and later
Marcelo Caetano, sent thousands of troops from Europe to perform counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. In 1963 Holden Roberto established the
Revolutionary Government of Angola in Exile (Portuguese:
Governo revolucionário de Angola no exílio, GRAE) in
Kinshasa in an attempt to claim on the international scene the sole representation of forces fighting Portuguese rule in Angola. In 1966, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (
UNITA) also started pro-independence guerrilla operations. The guerrilla movement in Angola was greatly hindered by ethnic and ideological divisions along with personality clashes between the leaders of the guerrilla. The Communist MPLA was led by
mestiço intellectuals and drew most of its support from the Mbundu people and
mestiços. The MPLA also tended to drew support very strongly from intellectuals and residents of Luanda. The FLNA led by Roberto drew most of its support from the Bakongo people and Roberto's efforts to widen support beyond the Bakongo were unsuccessful. Roberto was a man who had a talent for making people dislike him, which hindered his efforts to present himself as the preeminent Angolan guerrilla leader despite the fact that it was he who launched the war for independence in 1961. The fact that the FLNA engaged in brutal tactics such as press-ganging Mbundu peasants into serving as guerrillas along with its massacres of
mestiços and Ovimbundu gave the FLNA a thuggish reputation. Roberto had a poor understanding of guerrilla warfare and the FLNA was consistently the least effective of the three guerilla movements.
Jonas Savimbi, who had served as the GRAE's foreign minister, broke away in 1966 to found UNITA after having a personality clash with Roberto. Savimbi was an Ovimbundu (the largest ethnic group in Angola) and UNITA drew almost all of its support from the Ovimbundu people. The MPLA waged a classic "people's war" of the type advocated by Mao Zedong, and presented the guerrilla struggle as not just a war for independence, but also as a social revolution that would achieve a Marxist society. In rural areas, the MPLA waged a campaign of assassination against village chiefs who usually collaborated with the Portuguese colonial authorities. The urban
mestiço intellectuals who dominated the MPLA had some difficulty in appealing to African peasantry. The MPLA succeeded in winning some support from the Mbundu people, but was unsuccessful in appealing to support from the Bakongo and Ovimbundu. The guerrillas largely operated in the rural areas of Angola in part because the Portuguese presence in urban areas was too strong and in part because it was difficult to appeal to win support from urban African workers. Despite the overall military superiority of the
Portuguese Army in the Angolan theatre, the
independence guerrilla movements were never fully defeated. From 1966 to 1970, the pro-independence guerrilla movement MPLA expanded their previously limited insurgency operations to the East of Angola. This vast countryside area was far away from the main urban centres and close to foreign countries where the guerrillas were able to take shelter. The UNITA, a smaller pro-independence guerrilla organisation established in the East, supported the MPLA. Until 1970, the combined guerrilla forces of MPLA and UNITA in the East Front were successful in pressuring
Portuguese Armed Forces (FAP) in the area to the point that the guerrillas were able to cross the
Cuanza River and could threaten the territory of
Bié, which included an important urban centre in the agricultural, commercial and industrial town of
Silva Porto. In 1970, the guerrilla movement decided to reinforce the Eastern Front by relocating troops and armament from the North to the East.
Campaign in the Eastern Front, 1971 In 1971, the Portuguese Armed Forces started a successful counter-insurgency military campaign that expelled the three guerrilla movements operating in the East to beyond the frontiers of Angola, the
Frente Leste. The last guerrillas lost hundreds of soldiers and left tons of equipment behind, disbanding chaotically to neighbouring countries or, in some cases, joining or surrendering to the Portuguese. In order to gain the confidence of the local rural populations, and to create conditions for their permanent and productive settlement in the region, the Portuguese authorities organised massive vaccination campaigns, medical check-ups, and water, sanitation and alimentary infrastructure as a way to better contribute to the economic and social development of the people and dissociate the population from the guerrillas and their influence. On 31 December 1972, the Development Plan of the East (
Plano de Desenvolvimento do Leste) included in its first stage 466 development enterprises (150 were completed and 316 were being built). Nineteen health centres had been built and 26 were being constructed. 51 new schools were operating and 82 were being constructed By 1972, after the
Frente Leste, complemented by a pragmatic hearts and minds policy, the military conflict in Angola was effectively won for the Portuguese.
Federated state status, 1972 In June 1972, the
Portuguese National Assembly approved a new version of its
Organic Law on Overseas Territories, in order to grant its African overseas territories a wider
political autonomy and to tone down the increasing dissent both internally and abroad. It changed Angola's status from an
overseas province to an
autonomous state with authority over some internal affairs, while Portugal was to retain responsibility for defense and foreign relations. However, the intent was by no means to grant Angolan independence, but was instead to "win the hearts and minds" of the Angolans, convincing them to remain permanently a part of an intercontinental Portugal. Renaming Angola (like
Mozambique) in November 1972 (in effect 1 January 1973) "Estado" (state) was part of an apparent effort to give the
Portuguese Empire a sort of
federal structure, conferring some degree of autonomy to the "states". In fact, the structural changes and increase in autonomy were extremely limited. The government of the "State of Angola" was the same as the old provincial government, except for some cosmetic changes to personnel and titles. As in Portugal itself, the government of the "State of Angola" was entirely composed of people aligned with the
Estado Novo regime's establishment. While these changes were taking place, a few guerrilla nuclei stayed active inside the territory, and continued to campaign outside of Angola against Portuguese rule. The idea of having the independence movements take part in the political structure of the revamped territory's organization was absolutely unthinkable (on both sides).
Carnation Revolution, 1974 and independence, 1975 However, the Portuguese authorities were unable to defeat the guerrillas as a whole during the
Portuguese Colonial War, particularly in
Portuguese Guinea, and suffered heavy casualties in the 13 years of conflict. Throughout the colonial war Portugal faced increasing dissent, arms embargoes and other punitive sanctions from most of the
international community. The war was becoming even more unpopular in Portuguese society due to its length and costs, the worsening of diplomatic relations with other United Nations members, and the role it played as a factor in the perpetuation of the
Estado Novo regime. It was this escalation that would lead directly to the mutiny of members of the Portuguese armed forces in the
Carnation Revolution of April 1974 – an event that would lead to the independence of all of the former Portuguese colonies in Africa. garrison in Angola in 1975 On 25 April 1974, the Portuguese Government of the
Estado Novo regime under
Marcelo Caetano, the
corporatist and
authoritarian regime established by
António de Oliveira Salazar that had ruled Portugal since the 1930s, was overthrown in the
Carnation Revolution, a military uprising in
Lisbon. In May of that year, the
Junta de Salvação Nacional (the new revolutionary government of Portugal) proclaimed a truce with the pro-independence African guerrillas in an effort to promote peace talks and
independence. The military-led coup returned democracy to Portugal, ending the unpopular Colonial War where hundreds of thousands of Portuguese soldiers had been conscripted into military service, and replacing the authoritarian
Estado Novo (New State) regime and its secret police which repressed elemental
civil liberties and
political freedoms. It started as a professional class protest of
Portuguese Armed Forces captains against the 1973 decree law
Dec. Lei n.o 353/73. These events prompted a mass exodus of Portuguese citizens, overwhelmingly white but some
mestiço (mixed race) or black, from Portugal's African territories, creating hundreds of thousands destitute refugees — the
retornados. On 11 November 1975, Angola became a
sovereign state in accordance with the
Alvor Agreement and the newly independent country was proclaimed the
People's Republic of Angola for over 17 years until its constitution in 1992, when the country was renamed the "Republic of Angola". == Government ==