Angolan War of Independence
The Angolan War of Independence opened in 1961 with uprisings in the north and the assault on Luanda's prison, met by harsh Portuguese reprisals. The MPLA, FNLA and later UNITA, backed variously by the Soviet bloc, China and Western powers, sustained guerrilla campaigns against a metropolitan army of growing size. The war, alongside parallel conflicts in Guinea-Bissau (1963) and Mozambique (1964), consumed an enormous share of Portugal's resources and conscripted manpower, and was the principal grievance driving the officers of the 1974 Carnation Revolution. Independence came in November 1975, immediately followed by a multi-party civil war. Structurally this is a decolonisation independence event: a colonised people asserting sovereignty against the Portuguese metropole, and the dominant external/colonial pressure on the Portuguese polity of this period.
- Year: 1961 CE
- Category: Political
