Portuguese Angola () was a historical colony of the Portuguese Empire (1575–1951), the overseas province Portuguese West Africa of Estado Novo Portugal (1951–1972), and the State of Angola of the Portuguese Empire (1972–1975). The People's Republic of Angola became independent in 1975 until 1992, when the country officially changed to the Republic of Angola as a multi-party democratic republic. Brazil was the first country to recognize Angola's independence.
In the 16th and 17th century, Portugal ruled along the coast and engaged in military conflicts with the Kingdom of Kongo, but in the 18th century, Portugal colonial control began to gradually spread into the interior highlands. Other polities in the region included the Kingdom of Ndongo, Kingdom of Lunda, and Mbunda Kingdom. Full control of the entire territory that now forms Angola was not achieved until the beginning of the 20th century, when agreements with other European powers during the Scramble for Africa fixed the colony's interior borders, especially the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) as Belgium's private colony.
History 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
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.Joseph C. Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988 According to Oliver and Atmore, "for 200 years, the colony of Angola developed essentially as a gigantic slave-trading enterprise".Medieval Africa, 1250–1800 (pp174) By Roland Anthony Oliver, Anthony Atmore 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.
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. They annexed what remained of the kingdom of Ndongo after the Battle of Pungo Andongo. Control of most of the central highlands was achieved in the 18th century.
Further attempts at conquering the interior were undertaken in the 19th century starting in 1838, as part of the Campaigns of Pacification and Occupation.René Pélissier, Les guerres grises. Résistance et revoltes en Angola (1845–1941), Montamets/Orgeval: self-published, 1977 Viye was annexed in 1890. 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". In 1908 the "native tax" was introduced to coerce Angolans into the capitalist money economy and raise government revenue. Various forms of forced labour were employed, the most severe seeing Africans shipped to Sao Tome or Principe to work on plantations which few returned from. Local administrators forced people to work on constructing railways and buildings. As late as 1954, it is estimated over 300,000 Angolans worked under forced labour. It was not abolished until 1962.
With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the Germans, who controlled South West Africa, clashed with the Portuguese in Angola numerous times. The Naulila Incident in October 1914, saw German officers who had crossed into Angola killed by Portuguese forces. The Germans returned in December and captured Naulila, forcing the Portuguese to withdraw from the Humbe region. Several tribes subsequently launched revolts against Portuguese rule, including the German-backed Ovambo Uprising led by King Mandume ya Ndemufayo of Oukwanyama. The area was pillaged and looted and tribes that had not joined the rebellion were massacred. The revolting tribes started to fight each and a famine broke out due to a massive drought. In March 1915, Portuguese forces led by General António Júlio da Costa Pereira de Eça launched a campaign to reoccupy the territory and assert control over previously unconquered territory. The Portuguese forces numbered around 10,000 and included Damara, Herero, and Afrikaner irregulars. By the time the Portuguese forces reached the area, the Ovambo's military power had already been reduced due to the famine and social upheaval. 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.
In the 1930s, the Portuguese estimated that there were around 5,000 Mucubal, occupying an area two-thirds the size of Portugal. Between 1939 and 1943, Portuguese army operations against the Mucubal, who they accused of rebellion and cattle-thieving, resulted in hundreds of Mucubal killed. During the campaign, 3,529 were taken prisoner, 20% of whom were women and children, and imprisoned in concentration camps. Many died in captivity from undernourishment, violence and forced labor. Around 600 were sent to Sao Tome and Principe. Hundreds were also sent to a camp in Damba, where 26% died.
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.