1. Lusophone Central Africa
Portuguese Colonial Rule in Angola

2. Where in the world is Angola?

3. Where in Africa is Angola located?

4. Map of Angola
CABINDA
Ambriz
(FNLA)
Luanda
(MPLA)
Huambo
(Unita)

5. Angola :Colonialism and Independence
Portuguese presence / trade in Angola from the 1480s
Berlin Conference 1885: control formalised
1951: Portugal considered Angola to be an oversees province of Portugal: Policy of Assimilation
Portugal rejected calls for Independence from 1950s
War of Independence (1961 – 1974)
Coup by pro-democracy army officers in Portugal 1974
Jan. 1975: Alvor Accords: to prepare for take over by 3 liberation movements (were not honoured).
Elections set for 11/ (did not happen)

6. Colonial Rule 1885-1975 - Summary
Explored by the Portuguese navigator, Diego Cao in 1482, Angola became a link in trade with India and Southeast Asia. Later, it was a major source of slaves for Portugal’s new world colony, Brazil, and for the Americas, including the United States. By the end of the 19th century, a massive forced labour system had replaced formal slavery and would continue until outlawed in 1961.
Except for a short occupation by the Dutch ( ) Angola was under Portugal’s control until 1975.
Portugal's colonial claim to the region is recognized by the other European powers during the 1880s, and the boundaries of Portuguese Angola are agreed by negotiation in Europe in At the time Portugal is in effective control of only a small part of the area thus theoretically enclosed. But work is already under way to open up the interior.
The Portuguese colonial period in Angola lasted almost five hundred years, but the Portuguese population itself was quite small for most of the period. In 1845 there were only two thousand Portuguese living in Angola, increasing to forty thousand by 1940.
The last twenty years of colonial rule, from , saw the major influx of Portuguese who totaled 340,000 at independence in November 1975.
Despite their relatively small numbers, the Portuguese had a tremendous effect on native Angolans’ economy and their education.

7. Portuguese colonial economy
For four hundred years, the Portuguese were heavily involved in the slave trade, and perhaps eight million Angolans were lost to slavery.
Economically, the Portuguese developed Angola within separate colonial sectors far removed from most of Angolan society.
Initially through slave trade and later through production and exportation of rubber, diamonds, coffee and then oil, the Portuguese developed an economy that used natural resources of the country but did little to include Angolans other than through forced labour even after slavery was abolished in 1878.
Construction of a railway from Luanda to Malanje, in the fertile highlands, is started in Work begins in 1902 on a commercially more significant line from Benguela all the way inland to the Katanga region, aiming to provide access to the sea for the richest mining district of the Belgian Congo. The line reaches the Congo border in 1928. 
In the early years of the colony there was a continuation of the almost endemic warfare between the Portuguese and the various African rulers of the region. A systematic campaign of conquest was subsequently undertaken. One by one the local kingdoms were overwhelmed and abolished. By the 1920s almost the whole of Angola was under Portuguese control.
There was no longer slavery, but the plantations grew on a system of forced African labour
In essence Portuguese colonial economy became based on the plantation system (Prazos)
Since the 1920s, Portugal's administration showed an increasing interest in developing Angola's economy and social infrastructure

8. Social impact
Socially the Portuguese also had a great impact on the native population.
They reorganized villages and established transportation routes that facilitated exportation while at the same time dividing native groups.
Colonial rule allowed and at times encouraged interracial marriage, but there was a distinct separation of population groups according to racial background. 
Mestiços of mixed European and African ancestry were allowed access to more education and other opportunities than indígenas Africans, but in the last fifty years of colonial rule, official policies were strictly racially divided and even mestiços were denied access to or greatly restricted from holding jobs in the public and private sectors.
Despite official statements to the contrary, education of the native Africans from the beginning of colonization was discouraged.

9. Education
Officially Portuguese colonization valued education within its civilizing mission, but little was accomplished, especially outside of urban centres.
Natives who were educated were considered assimilados or assimilated into the Portuguese culture and values, and during the later years of colonial rule, the brightest were often sent to Portugal for secondary and/or higher education.
Many of these, however, were exposed to "progressive" ideas in Europe and were prevented from returning to Africa for fear of political unrest.
The most accurate census figures from 1950 estimated that there were fewer than thirty-one thousand assimilados in the entire Angolan population of four million.
Although Portuguese was the language of instruction from the first primary school established by the Jesuits in 1605, in 1921 the Portuguese forbade by decree the use of African languages in the schools.
In 1940, the Portuguese ruler Salazar signed the Missionary Accord with the Vatican that made the Roman Catholic missions and their schools the official representatives of the state in Africa.
Most students in the early mission schools came from traditional African ruling families, thus creating a small but important educated elite in the country.
But until the 1960s, the Catholic missions had limited financial backing, and education declined in Angola.
In addition, the Portuguese created the Department of Native Affairs, and they officially separated state-run education of the assimilados and the Portuguese from that of rural native Africans, run by Catholic missionaries and called ensino de adaptação (adaptation school).
A great majority of Africans remained uneducated even after the 1960s when a new emphasis was placed on education by the colonial rulers.
During the 1960s many new schools were established, but by some estimates, just slightly more than 2 percent of the Angolan school-age children were admitted.

10. Education (Contd)
Other figures state that enrolment in primary school rose from 6.3 percent in 1960 to 32 percent in 1970, and secondary-school enrolment rose from 0.6 percent in 1960 to 4.3 percent in 1970, but these figures include both state- and missionary-run schools.
Those students who were in schools followed an educational system similar to that in Portugal with a pre-primary year stressing language, and then four years of primary school of two two-year cycles.
Secondary school consisted of a two-year cycle and a final three-year cycle.
Most students who began schooling, however, did not complete even the primary school cycles.
Adaptation schools run by the missionaries had especially high dropout rates, with figures showing 95.6 percent of the students not continuing. One of the significant reasons for this was that the majority of teachers at all primary schools had very few qualifications.
Secondary schools had many Portuguese teachers, but they, too, had limited success in part because they needed to spend the first years teaching material from the primary level.
As part of the Portuguese university system, the University of General Studies was established in Angola in 1962.
English and medical studies took place in Luanda, educational studies were given in Sá da Bandeira, and agronomy and veterinary medicine were at Nova Lisboa.
Within ten years, close to three thousand students attended the university, but only a very small percentage of these students were African. 

11. Sources
Patrick Chabal, A History of Postcolonial Lusophone Africa, London: Hurst, 2002
P. Duffy, Portugal in Africa
G. Bender, Angola under the Portuguese
M.D.D. Newitt, Portugal in Africa: The last hundred years