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Who colonized Angola?

Southern Africa — the powers that ruled Angola, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized Angola?

Portugal, from the founding of Luanda in 1575 until independence on 11 November 1975 after a fourteen-year liberation war.

Angola was the principal source of the Atlantic slave trade for most of its duration, with Luanda and Benguela the busiest embarkation ports on the continent.

Reference

Who ruled Angola, and when

before 1575
Kongo, Ndongo and Matamba kingdoms
1575–1975
Portugal

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
Portugal
Independence
11 November 1975
Slave trade
Angola supplied roughly a third of all Africans carried across the Atlantic
Forced labour
The contrato system persisted into the 1960s
Length
400 years of Portuguese presence

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1575

    Luanda founded; slaving expeditions inland begin.

  2. 1600s–1800s

    Angola becomes the largest single source of enslaved Africans.

  3. 1961

    Baixa de Cassanje revolt; liberation war begins.

  4. 1974

    Carnation Revolution in Portugal.

  5. 1975

    Independence, followed immediately by civil war.

Context

What the record shows

Portuguese rule outlasted every other European empire in Africa because the dictatorship in Lisbon depended on the colonies for legitimacy; both fell together in 1974–75.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised Angola?
Portugal, from 1575 to 1975.
Why did Portugal hold Angola so long?
The Estado Novo dictatorship refused decolonisation and fought a colonial war from 1961 until the regime itself fell in 1974.
When did Angola become independent?
11 November 1975.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Angola

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.