The Angolan War of Independence (1961–1975) began as an uprising against forced cotton cultivation, and became a multi-faction struggle for the control of Portugal's Overseas Province of Angola among three nationalist movements and a separatist movement. The war ended when a leftist military coup in Lisbon in April 1974 overthrew Portugal's Estado Novo regime, and the new regime immediately stopped all military action the African colonies, declaring its intention to grant tham independence without delay.
In Angola, the war came formally to an end in January 1975 when the Portuguese government, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), and the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) signed the Alvor Agreement,
It was a guerrilla war in which the Portuguese Armed Forces waged a counter-insurgency campaign against armed groups mostly dispersed across sparsely populated areas of the vast Angolan countryside. Many atrocities were committed by all forces involved in the conflict.
Read more about Angolan War Of Independence: Historical Background of The Territory, Civil Disobedience (1948-1959), 1960s, Race and Ethnicity in The Portuguese Armed Forces, 1970-1975, Aftermath
Famous quotes containing the words war and/or independence:
“It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“...there was the annual Fourth of July picketing at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. ...I thought it was ridiculous to have to go there in a skirt. But I did it anyway because it was something that might possibly have an effect. I remember walking around in my little white blouse and skirt and tourists standing there eating their ice cream cones and watching us like the zoo had opened.”
—Martha Shelley, U.S. author and social activist. As quoted in Making History, part 3, by Eric Marcus (1992)