by
Darian S.

NATIONAL FLAG OF ANGOLA:

LOCATION:

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ANGOLA

            This is how the Portuguese colonized Angola. Their first contact was with the king of Kongo. At first the two sides where friends, King Kongo would trade slaves for guns and other supplies. In the 1540s the Ndongo kingdom started to trade with them also.  Since the Portuguese seemed to be liked the Ndongo kingdom invited some Portuguese to their capital and imprisoned them for good trade in the future. This caused some disagreement between the two kingdoms and the two turned against each other. In 1557 the Ndongo kingdom totally broke away from the Kongo Kingdom. In 1570 the Portuguese heard stories of gold and decided to take over. In 1575 the Portuguese landed on the shore of Launda where they established a military post. In the year 1579 the Portuguese where ready to head to Guanza river where they were going to take over Ndongo’s capital. In the 16^th century all three kingdoms decided to go against the Portuguese and a small part of their success went to a female leader named Nzinga. A treaty was made in 1684 and it lasted until the 18^th century where the Portuguese decided to take over more land.

            The Portuguese couldn’t find any gold so they decided to take slaves and sent them off to their colony in Brazil. In 1575 the warring tribes started to sell each other into slavery for food and beer in return. They did this instead of coming together with other countries to overthrow their common enemy. Slavery was actually established in 1834 and forced labor was still permitted. Clashes started after World War II and were made worse in1961 then the authorities crushed the revolts.          

In January 1975 the three guerrilla leaders met in Alvor.  Portugal agreed to democratic elections in Angola still supervised by Portugal. On November 11, 1975 they signed the Alvor agreement to ensure the future independence of Angola. As good as this may seem it was actually a fake and the Portuguese were getting close to their 50^th year of dictatorship. There was reserved power for MPLA on the agreed date of November 11, 1975 instead of independence Angola was once again taken over but this time by the MPLA.  The only country that really tried to help was the United States.

            Since Angola’s freedom was fake they didn’t really get to understand how it felt to not be ruled by some dictator. A lot of wars actually broke out trying to win the independence of Angola and they actually became an area of contention of the Cold War. There also had civil wars. On February 22, 2002 troops assassinated Jonas Savimbi and six weeks later the rebel leaders signed a cease-fire deal with the government. After the Civil Wars were over and peace seemed safe more than 500,000 Angolans were faced with starvation.

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Works Cited

Sheehan, Sean. Cultures of the World Angola

Lauré, Jason. Enchantment of the World Angola

Infoplease. www.infoplease.com/countries

Lonely Planet. www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide

Flag and map courtesy of Microsoft Clipart Gallery.