Portuguese Angola

Portuguese Angola was the Portuguese colony on the Atlantic coast of south-west Africa that became the modern state of Angola. Portuguese presence began with Diogo Cao's voyage to the Kongo kingdom in 1484, but the colony is usually dated from 1575, when the Portuguese established the settlement of Luanda on the coast south of Kongo. Between 1580 and the 1820s, well over a million people from the region were exported as slaves across the Atlantic. For most of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Portuguese authority was confined to coastal forts and trading posts, while the interior was dominated by African states such as Kongo, Ndongo, Lunda, and Mbunda. Military campaigns and treaties gradually extended control inland during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the borders of the colony were fixed during the Scramble for Africa. Angola became an overseas province of Portugal in 1951 and was renamed the State of Angola in 1972. Independence was achieved in November 1975 after a long liberation war.