Angola and Mozambique Win Independence From Portugal

Date

1975

Category

Exploration & colonisation

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa (Angola)

Era

Contemporary

Significance

In 1975 Portugal relinquished its two largest African colonies, ending nearly five centuries of empire and closing the era of European colonial rule on the continent.

Mozambique became independent on 25 June 1975 under FRELIMO, and Angola followed on 11 November 1975, both after protracted liberation wars accelerated by Portugal's 1974 Carnation Revolution. The abrupt withdrawal left fragile new states without trained administrators, as most Portuguese settlers fled within months. In Angola, rival movements MPLA, FNLA, and UNITA immediately plunged into a civil war that drew in Cuban troops, South African forces, and superpower backing, turning the country into a Cold War proxy battlefield for decades. The decolonisation also emboldened liberation movements across southern Africa and heightened pressure on white-minority regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa. These independences marked the near-completion of Africa's decolonisation and reshaped the region's political map, though the human cost of the ensuing conflicts stretched into the twenty-first century.

Empires active in 1975

• Soviet Union
  1922 CE – 1991 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE – 1976 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE
• Dutch Empire
  1581 CE – 1975 CE
• Yugoslavia
  1918 CE – 1992 CE

Related exploration & colonisation events

• Russian Conquest of the Central Asian Khanates (Kokand, Bukhara, Khiva)
  1865–1876
• French invasion of Algiers
  14 June 1830
• Cook's First Voyage Charts New Zealand and Eastern Australia
  1769-1770
• Jacob Roggeveen reaches Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
  5 April 1722
• Abel Tasman's Voyage: First European Contact with New Zealand, Tonga and Fiji
  December 1642 - February 1643
• The Pilgrims, Plymouth Colony and the Mayflower Compact
  November 1620

Further reading

The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence

The wider story

The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence

Martin Meredith

Gripping account of Africa's nations from independence to the present.

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