Portuguese Angola

Province of Angola State of Angola
Província de Angola Estado de Angola
Colony; Overseas province; State of the Portuguese Empire
1575–1975
Flag Coat of arms
Portuguese West Africa (Angola and Cabinda)
Capital		Luanda
Languages		Portuguese
Political structure		Colony; Overseas province; State of the Portuguese Empire
Head of state
•	1575-1578	King Sebastian I of Portugal
•	1974-1975	President Francisco da Costa Gomes
Governor-general
•	1837-1839 (first)	Manuel Bernardo Vidal
•	1975 (last)	Leonel Alexandre Gomes Cardoso
Governor
•	1589-1591 (first)	Luís Serrão
•	1836- (last)	Domingos de Saldanha Oliveira e Daun
Historical era		Imperialism
•	Establishment of a coastal settlement	1575
•	Fall of Portuguese Empire	November 11, 1975
Area
•	1970	1,246,700 km² (481,354 sq mi)
Population
•	1970 est.	5,926,000
Density		4.8 /km²  (12.3 /sq mi)
Currency		Angolan escudo (in the 20th century)
Preceded by Succeeded by Kingdom of Kongo Kingdom of Ndongo Lunda Empire People's Republic of Angola

Portuguese Angola or Portuguese West Africa are the common terms by which Angola is designated when referring to the historic period when it was a Portuguese overseas territory in southwestern Africa. The former Portuguese Angola became an independent country in 1975 and now forms the Republic of Angola.

During its history of 400 years, Portuguese Angola had the following formal designations: Donee of the Kingdom of Sebaste (1575-1588), Captaincy-General of the Kingdom of Angola (1588-1834), Province of Angola (1834-1926), Colony of Angola (1926-1951), Province of Angola (1951-1972) and State of Angola (1972-1975). It is to note that the term "Colony of Angola" began to be used occasionally since 1914, but only in 1926 it completely replaced the designation "Province of Angola".

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 1975. During these five centuries, several entirely different situations have to be distinguished.

When Diogo Cão and other explorers reached the Kongo Kingdom at the end of the 15th century, Angola as such did not exist. 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 slaves. They therefore maintained a peaceful and mutually profitable relationship with the rulers and nobles of the Kongo Kingdom, whom they Christianized and taught Portuguese, allowing them a share of the benefits from the slave trade. They 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 settlement of Luanda was established on the coast south of the Kongo Kingdom, and in the 17th century the settlement of Benguela, even farther to the south. From 1580 to the 1820s, well over a million people from present-day Angola were exported as slaves to the so-called New World, mainly to Brazil, but also to North America. According to Oliver and Atmore, "for 200 years, the colony of Angola developed essentially as a gigantic slave-trading enterprise".Kingdom of Portugal 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.