History of Angola

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1 Early history
2 The Establishment of the Portuguese Colony
3 The Imbangala Period
4 The War with Njinga
5 The Dutch Occupation
6 The Restoration of Portuguese Authority
7 The Colony of Benguela
8 The Eighteenth Century
9 Angola and the Scramble for Africa
10 Independence movements
11 Civil war
12 Current situation
13 Sources and references

[edit] Early history

The earliest inhabitants of the area were hunter-gatherers whose remains date back to the Old Stone Age. Beginning in the last centuries BCE, people speaking languages of the Western Bantu family are believed on archaeologial and linguistic evidence to have entered the country and introduced agriculture and iron working. However, studies of DNA from Cabinda have found no traces of any other population groups in the modern day population, which present difficulty for explaining the existence of an earlier population, save that they were completely replaced. In present-day Angola Portugal arrived in 1483 at the Congo River, where the Kingdom of Kongo existed. Other states existing at that time included Kongo dia Nlaza and Nziko located to Kongo's east, Ndongo, in the highlands between the Kwanza and Lukala Rivers, the Kingdom of Benguela, located on the front range of the Bihe Plateau, and Songo located south of Ndongo.

[edit] The Establishment of the Portuguese Colony

Queen Nzinga in peace negotiations with the Portuguese governor in Luanda, 1622.

The Portuguese established themselves on the west coast of Africa towards the close of the 15th century. The river Congo was encountered by Diogo Cão in 1483. He erected a stone pillar at the mouth of the river, which accordingly took the title of Rio do Padrão. He exchanged hostages with the local people, who reported that the country was subject to a great monarch, Manikongo or lord of the Kingdom of Kongo, resident at Mbanza Kongo. The Portuguese into a cooperative relationship with the rulers of Kongo. Gonçalo de Sousa was dispatched on a formal embassy in 1491; and the first missionaries entered the country in his train. King Nzinga Nkuwu of Kongo was baptized at this time, taking the name of João in honor of the king of Portugal. His son Afonso Mvemba Nzinga established Christianity as the national religion by 1520. In 1595, the Pope declared Kongo to be an episcopal see and the principal church, built in 1548 and dedicated to the Savior (São Salvador) was named as cathedral, whose jurisdiction included both Kongo and the Portuguese colony of Angola.

Portugal had several missions to Kongo's southern neighbor, Ndongo the first of which was dispatched in 1520, but failed and was withdrawn. A second mission was sent to Ndongo in 1560 led by Paulo Dias de Novais and including Jesuit priests. Dias de Novais returned to Portugal in 1564, leaving the Jesuit Francisco de Gouveia in Ndongo. While in Portugal Dias de Novais secured a grant allowing him to colonize the country. In exchange for agreeing to raise private funds to finance his expedition, bring Portuguese colonists and build forts in the coutnry the crown gave him rights to conquer and rule the sections south of the Kwanza River

Dias de Novais arrived in Angola with an armed force and more Jesuit priests. Originally he planned to offer his small force as a mercenary reinforcment to Ndongo and to Kongo for their various wars. After indifferent success, a Portuguese who had long resided in Kongo, Francisco Barbuda, persuaded the king of Ndongo that Portugal intended to take his country over. Acting on this intelligence, the king ordered the Portuguese to be killed and expelled. In 1579, therefore Ndongo made a sudden and devastating war on the Portuguese (and their many servants and slaves, many of whom were from Kongo) and drove them from Ndongo back to a few holdings in the region around Luanda. The Portuguese were aided in their defense by Kongo, whose king Álvaro I, sent a large army in his support and to attack Ndongo in revenge for the slaughter of Kongo slaves. Although Kongo's army was defeated trying to cross the Bengo River and ran out of supplies, Dias de Novais managed to hold on to Luanda and the small fort of Nzele on the Kwanza River.

From 1575 to 1589 when he died, Dias de Novais sought to recover and expand Portuguese possessions in the Kwanza Valley. He did so largely by making alliances with local rulers who were disaffected with Ndongo rule, notably the ruler (soba) of Muxima. In this effort, Portuguese managed to take over the province of Ilamba located between the Kwanza and Bengo Rivers, and in a hard fought battle in 1582, founded the post at Massangano at the confluence of the Kwanza and Lucala Rivers. Emboldened by victories over Ndongo armies in 1583 and 1585, Dias de Novais' lieutenant Luis Serrão, who took over the colony following Dias de Novais' death in 1589 led an attack on Ndongo's capital at Kabasa. This attack, however, was a spectacular failure, as Ndongo, allied with its neighbor Matamba crushed the Portuguese army and drove it back to Massangano.

The following period was a stalemate, capped by a peace agreement in 1599. Portuguese governors in the interim, finding themselves too weak to attack Ndongo, were content with engaging in political wrangling with the kingdom and with seeking opportunities to use its own politial conflicts to their advantage.

[edit] The Imbangala Period

Around 1600, Portuguese merchants working on the coast south of the Kwanza River encountered Imbangala bands that were then ravaging the Kingdom of Benguela, overlord in the region. These Imbangala were prepared to sell captives they had taken in their wars to the Portuguese in exchange for European goods. In around 1615, Portuguese governors invited some of these bands to cross the Kwanza and serve in their armies. Governor Luis Mendes de Vasconcelos used these bands to good effect, when, beginning in 1618 he used them to buttress his armies and local rebels to attack Ndongo. Over the next three years, he expelled the king of Ndongo from his capital at Kabasa, forcing him to take refuge on the Kindonga Islands in the Kwanza River, captured members of the royal family, sent expedionary forces as far inland as Matamba, and captured and exported as many as 50,000 people as slaves to Brazil and the Spanish Indies. The first Africans to arrive in the North American English colony of Virginia were taken from these captives, by English privateers attacking shipping.

In the aftermath of the war, the king of Ndongo sent his sister Njinga Mbandi to Luanda to negotiate a peace treaty in 1622. The Imbangala bands had not proved as obedient as the Portuguese hoped and were ravaging far and wide among both Ndongo's lands and those controlled by Portugal. In the terms of the agreement Njinga negotiated, Portugal agreed to withdraw a fort at Ambaca which Mendes de Vasconcelos had founded as a base for his operations against Ndongo, and to return a large number of serfs (kijiko) he had captured, to help in restraining the Imbangala operating in Ndongo, and allow the king to return to his traditional capital. In exchange Ndongo would swear vassalage to Portugal and pay 100 slaves per year as tribute.However, none of these conditions were actually met.

Mendes de Vasconcelos' successor, João Correia de Sousa agreed to the terms of the treaty, in part because he hoped to repeat his predecessors war with Imbangala help against Kongo. In 1622 he led a bloody campaign aganst the territory of Kasanze, located near Luanda and under Kongo's authority, then claiming that the Kongo subordinate of Nambu a Ngongo harbored runaway slaves, he invaded that region, and finally, upset that the Kongo electors had chosen Pedro II the former Duke of Mbamba to be king of Kongo, invaded Mbamba itself. In November, 1622, he met a hastily gathered Kongo army at the Battle of Mbumbi and defeated it, with Imbangala allies eating the Duke and other Kongo nobles. However, Pedro II brought down a larger army, defeated the Portuguese force and began a campaign of humiliation for the many Portuguese resident in Kongo. In the aftermath of this shock, many Portuguese resident in Luanda, who had invested money in Kongo were threatened with ruin and demanded the governor leave. Correia de Sousa was driven from Ndongo and was imprisoned in Portugal.

Kongo, meanwhile, had also made an alliance with the Dutch West India Company to attack Luanda, and the junta that ran Angola in the aftermath of Correia de Sousa's expulsion, quickly made peace with Kongo, restoring some of the slaves they had seized. As a result Kongo refused to assist Piet Heyn's fleet from the Netherlands when it arrived and attacked Luanda in 1624.

[edit] The War with Njinga

Following the disaster of Correia de Sousa, the crown sent Fernao de Sousa to be governor of Angola in 1624. He had orders to make fewer unjust wars in the country, and he tried to bring some order to its fiscal system. But he insisted on keeping Portuguese positions at Ambaca and to return the captured kijiko in Ndongo, and was reluctant to recognize Njinga as ruler of Ndongo following the death of her brother by suicide in 1624. As a result of the failure of negotiations, de Sousa undertook a series of wars against Njinga. Two major wars in 1626 and 1628 drove Njinga from the Kingdonga Island to Matamba where she established her base in 1631. Fitful negotiations followed, and in 1639 Njinga concluded a peace with Portugal. At the same time Portugal established diplomati relations with Kasanje, the Imbangala band that occupied the Kwango River valley south of Njinga's domains in Matamba.

[edit] The Dutch Occupation

From 26 August 1641 to August 21 / 24 August 1648, a Dutch occupation of coastal areas (under a governor of Dutch West India Company) forced the Portuguese into the interior. After first taking Luanda, the Portuguese withdrew to the Bengo River, but following the renewal of the Kongo-Dutch alliance, Bengo was attacked and subsequently Portuguese forces withdrew to Massangano. The Dutch were not intersted in conquering Angola, much to the chagrin of Kongo's king Garcia II and Njinga who had both pressed them to assist in driving the Portuguese from the colony. However, Dutch authorities came to realize that they could not monopolize the slave trade from Angola just by holding Luanda and a few nearby places, and moreover, the Portuguese sent several relief expeditions to Massangano from Brazil. Consequently in 1647, the agreed to reinforce Njinga's army following her defeat by Portuguese forces in 1646. At the Battle of Kombi Dutch and Njinga's armies crushed a Portuguese army and in its aftermath laid siege to Ambaca, Massangano and Muxima. However, a larger and stronger relief from from Brazil, led by Salvador Correia de Sa, took Luanda and the Dutch capitulated and evacuated Angola.

[edit] The Restoration of Portuguese Authority

Salvador de Sa sought to restore Portuguese authority as much as possible during his rule from 1648 to 1652. However, he made little progress, aside from forcing Njinga to retreat from her position in Cavanga to Matamba. His successors in the seventeenth century sought to renew the warfare that had expanded Portuguese authority and filled slaves ships before the Dutch interlude. However aggressive foreign policies were less successful. Following a disastrous campaign in Kisama in 1654-55 the governor was faced with widespread settler disobedience as they saw that the wars hurt their trade and killed their subjects. While Portugal won a battle of Kongo at the Battle of Mbwila in 1665, the suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Kitombo when they tried to invade Kongo in 1670. Their principal ally in the war against Njinga, disaffected when Portugal agreed to accept her claim as Queen of Ndongo in 1657 revolted in 1670. Although the Portuguese managed to defeat him in a long siege of his capital of Mpungo Andongo in 1671 in was a costly victory. Further interference in Matamba and the affairs of Matamba and Kasanje in 1680s led to another defeat at the Battle of Katole in 1684. Following this affair, Portugal turned its attention away from war in the north either against Kongo or Ndongo.

In 1684, the bishop's seat was removed to São Paulo de Luanda, and São Salvador declined in importance, especially after its abandonment in 1678 as the civil war in that country intensified. Even after Pedro IV restored the city and repopulated it in 1709, the ecclesiastical center of gravity in Angola rested with the Portuguese colony.

[edit] The Colony of Benguela

The attention of the Portuguese was, moreover, now turned more particularly to the southern districts of Angola. The colony of Benguela had been founded by governor Manuel Cerveira Pereira in 1617. Initially he had hoped to make it an aggressive military colony like Angola, but after an unsuccessful alliance with the local Imbangala, had had to abandon these plans. His plans to further strengthen the colony by seizing rich copper mines reputed to be in Sumbe also came to naught. Other attempts to expand from Benguela, such as the lengthy campaign of Lopo Soares Lasso in 1629 failed to produce many slaves or conquests.

In the 1680s, following the failure of northern warfare, Portuguese govenors tried again to make more war in the south. They embroiled themselves in the politics of the Ovimbundu Kingdoms that lay in the central highlands (Bihe Plateau) of Angola. These campaigns, especially ambitious ones in 1770s did result in formal agreements of vassalage between some of the more important of the kingdoms, such as Viye and Mbailundu, but were never either large sources of slaves or real conquests from which resources or tribute could be drawn.

[edit] The Eighteenth Century

In the 18th century, Portuguese governors sought to limit what they considered illegal trade by merchants in their colony with Dutch, French and English merchants who frequently visited the northern kingdoms of Kongo and Loango. To this end, they established a fort and settlement at Encoje (near Mbwila) to block travel through the mountainous gap that allowed merchants to cross to Kongo, in 1783-1784 they sought to occupy Cabinda on the north coast, but were driven away, and from 1789 to 1792 the Portuguese carried on a war against the Marquisate of Mussolo (the district immediately south of Ambriz in Kongo's territory) without much success, and finally in 1791, they built a fort at Quincolo on the Loje, and for a time they worked the mines of Bembe.

At the same time, Portugal also sought to extend its relations into the interior, especially the lands beyond the Kwango River. Matamba and Kasanje had consistenly blocked attempts by Portuguese merchants to penetrate into their lands, and in 1755-56, Manuel Correia Leitão, visited Kasanje and reported on the lands across the Kwanza. Among them was the powerful Lunda Empire whose armies had conquered much of the territory there. Lunda eventually entered into diplomatic relations with Portugal, sending an embassy there in the early nineteenth century and receiving counter embassies from Luanda.

The Portuguese from Benguela sought increasingly to expand their power and limit trade to their merchants in the Bihe Highlands during the eighteenth century, and following their intervention in the Mbailundu War in the 1770s had treaty relationships (which they described as vassalage) with the various states there. These arrangements included gathering Portuguese merchants in capital cities and making permanent presences in the capitals of these states. From these bases, Portugal sought to explore trade relations with Lunda that avoided the Kwango River states.

[edit] Angola and the Scramble for Africa

Until, however, the "scramble for Africa" began in 1884, the Portuguese possessed no fort or settlement on the coast to the north of Ambriz, which had been first occupied in 1855. In 1855-56, Portuguese forces intervened in a civil war and helped to put Pedro V Agua Rosda on Kongo's throne. They left a fort at São Salvador, which they maintained until 1866. Pedro V reigned over thirty years. In 1888, a Portuguese resident was stationed at Salvador, when Pedro agreed to become a Portuguese vassal. He hoped to use Portuguese to assist in his attempt to rebuild royal authority in other parts of Kongo.

Full Portuguese administrative control of the interior did not occur until the beginning of the 20th century.

In 1884, Britain, which up to that time had steadily refused to acknowledge that Portugal possessed territorial rights north of Ambriz, concluded a treaty recognizing Portuguese sovereignty over both banks of the lower Congo; but the treaty, meeting with opposition in England and Germany, was not ratified. Agreements concluded with the Congo Free State, Germany and France in 1885-1886 (modified in details by subsequent arrangements) fixed the limits of the province, except in the south-east, where the frontier between Barotseland (north-west Rhodesia) and Angola was determined by an Anglo-Portuguese agreement of 1891 and the arbitration award of the king of Italy in 1905 (see History of Africa).

Up to the end of the 19th century the hold of Portugal over the interior of the province was slight, though its influence extended to the Congo and Zambezi basins. The abolition of the external slave trade proved very injurious to the trade of the seaports. From 1860 onward, the agricultural resources of the country were developed with increasing energy, a work in which Brazilian merchants took the lead. After the definite partition of Africa among the European powers, Portugal applied herself with some seriousness to exploit Angola and her other African possessions. Nevertheless, in comparison with its natural wealth, the development of the country had been slow.

Slavery and the slave trade continued to flourish in the interior in the early years of the 20th century, despite the prohibitions of the Portuguese government. The extension of authority over the inland tribes proceeded very slowly and was not accomplished without occasional reverses. In September 1904, a Portuguese column lost over 300 men killed, including 114 Europeans, in an encounter with the Kunahamas on the Kunene, not far from the German frontier. The Kunahamas are a wild, raiding tribe and were probably largely influenced by the revolt of their southern neighbours, the Hereros, against the Germans. In 1905 and again in 1907, there was renewed fighting in the same region.

Portugal's primary interest in Angola was slavery. The slaving system began early in the 16th century with the purchase from African chiefs of people to work on sugar plantations in São Tomé, Principe, and Brazil. Whilst the economic development of the country was not entirely neglected and many useful food products were introduced, the prosperity of the province was very largely dependent on the slave trade with Brazil, which was not legally abolished until 1830 and in fact continued for many years subsequently. Many scholars agree that by the 19th century, Angola was the largest source of slaves not only for Brazil, but for the Americas, including the United States. By the end of the 19th century, a massive forced labor system had replaced formal slavery and would continue until outlawed in 1961. Colonial Portuguese rule in the 20th century was characterized by rigid dictatorship and exploitation of African labor.

It was this forced labor that provided the basis for development of a plantation economy and, by the mid-20th century, a major mining sector. Forced labor combined with British financing to construct three railroads from the coast to the interior. The most important of these was the transcontinental Benguela railroad that linked the port of Lobito with the copper zones of the Belgian Congo and what is now Zambia.

[edit] Independence movements

Colonial economic development did not translate into social development for native Angolans. The Portuguese regime encouraged white immigration, especially after 1950, which intensified racial antagonisms -- many new Portuguese settlers arrived after World War II, making up 5% of the population by the early 1970s. As decolonization progressed elsewhere in Africa, Portugal, under the Salazar and Caetano dictatorships, rejected independence and treated its African colonies as overseas provinces. Consequently, three independence movements emerged:

the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), with a base among the Kimbundu and the mixed-race intelligentsia of Luanda, and links to communist parties in Portugal and the East Bloc;
the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA), with an ethnic base in the Bakongo region of the north and links to the United States and the Mobutu regime in Zaïre; and
the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), led by Jonas Malheiro Savimbi with an ethnic and regional base in the Ovimbundo heartland in the center of the country.

The Frente para a Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda (FLEC) began a campaign for the independence of the Cabinda enclave -- Angolan territory separated from the main part of the country by Zaïre.

From the early 1960s, elements of these movements fought against the Portuguese. In their war for independence, which began in 1961, Angolans were divided. The tribal-based FNLA, the Maoist UNITA, and the Maoist and broadly-based MPLA were all strong groups fighting the Portuguese.

[edit] Civil war

Main article: Angolan Civil War

A 1974 coup d'état in Portugal established a military government that promptly ceased the war and agreed to hand over power to a coalition of the three movements. The coalition quickly broke down and turned into a civil war. The United States, Zaïre and South Africa intervened militarily in favor of the FNLA and UNITA. In response, Cuba, backed by the Soviet Union, intervened in favor of the MPLA. In November 1975, the MPLA had all but crushed UNITA, and the South African forces withdrew. The U.S. Congress barred further U.S. military involvement in Angola.

In control of Luanda and the coastal strip (and increasingly lucrative oil fields), the MPLA declared independence on November 11, 1975, the day the Portuguese abandoned the capital. Portugal recognized the declaration of independence. Agostinho Neto became the first president, followed by José Eduardo dos Santos in 1979. The opposition movements, FNLA and UNITA, created a joint government in the zones they controlled. The "Democratic Republic of Angola" was founded on November 24, 1975, with Holden Roberto and Jonas Savimbi as co-presidents and Jose Ndele and Johny E. Pinnock as co-prime ministers. This government was dissolved after January 30, 1976.

Civil war between UNITA and the MPLA continued until an American and Portuguese-brokered agreement resulted in withdrawal of foreign troops (thousands of Cuban and South African soldiers, respectively obeying Moscow and Washington) in 1989, and led to the Bicesse Accord in 1991, which spelled out an electoral process for a democratic Angola under the supervision of the United Nations. MPLA won the first round with 49% of the votes, against 40% for UNITA. Opponent Savimbi refused the results and returned to war. A second peace accord, the Lusaka Protocol, was brokered in Lusaka, Zambia and signed on November 20, 1994.

The peace accord between the government and UNITA provided for the integration of former UNITA insurgents into the government and armed forces. However, in 1995, localized fighting resumed. A national unity government was installed in April of 1997, but serious fighting resumed in late 1998 when Savimbi renewed the war for a second time, claiming that the MPLA was not fulfilling its obligations. The UN Security Council voted on August 28, 1997, to impose sanctions on UNITA. The Angolan military launched a massive offensive in 1999 that destroyed UNITA's conventional capacity and recaptured all major cities previously held by Savimbi's forces. Savimbi then declared that UNITA would return to guerrilla tactics, and much of the country remained in turmoil.

The extended civil wars rendered hundreds of thousands of people homeless. Up to 1.5 million lives may have been lost in fighting over the past quarter century.

[edit] Current situation

In 2002, Savimbi was killed in a military operation, and UNITA and the MPLA agreed to sign a cease-fire six weeks later, on April 4. In August 2002, UNITA declared itself a political party and officially demobilized its armed force, ending the civil war. Angola is currently at peace under the leadership of the MPLA and dos Santos. It faces huge social and economic problems as a result of an almost continual war since 1961.