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Angola Essay

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Angola

Angola, formerly Portuguese West Africa, is the seventh largest country in Africa. The country can be divided into three major regions: the coastal plain, a transition zone, and the vast inland plateau. Angola has a tropical climate with its vegetation including tropical rain forests, savannas, grasslands, palm trees and even deserts. A great variety of animal life ranging from elephants, rhinoceros, giraffes, and even crocodiles can also be found in this African country (Microsoft 1). Very little is known about the early regions of Angola. "The original inhabitants of present-day Angola were hunters and gatherers. Their descendants, called Bushman by the Europeans, still inhabit portions of southern Africa" (Collelo …show more content…

This difference of interest soon created conflict between Afonso and the Portuguese. "The slave trade, greedily aided by local chiefs, gradually undermined the authority of the king, and twenty-five years after Afonso's death the state succumbed to the onslaught of the Jaga, a belligerent horde of nomads from the east" (Microsoft 4). "With Portuguese help, the invaders were finally ousted, but by this time the life had gone out of the ravaged kingdom" (July 155). "Clearly, turmoil, victimization, and disappointment are themes that have pervaded Angola's history, especially since the arrival of the Europeans in the fifteenth century" (Collelo xxi). "In 1576, in effective control of the countryside and facing no organized Kongo opposition, the Portuguese founded the town of Luanda, in effect establishing the colony of Angola" (Bender 24). After the Portuguese began reaching the interior, they soon appointed royal governors who tried to impose their ideas and beliefs upon the people (Halladay 82). Many African leaders resisted this foreign rule and the Europeans only managed to "establish insecure footholds along the coast" (Collelo 9). Kings Alvaro I and II both brought some stability to the falling kingdom by expanding their territory and at the same time keeping the Portuguese at bay. But after the death of Alvaro II, conflicts between the

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