Angola’s whites: Political behaviour and national identity

This is a study of the political behaviour and of the national identity of the white settler community in Angola. Analysis of the political behaviour of Angola’s white settlers, the second-largest settler community in Africa in 1970, indicates that they not only developed a form of local economic nationalism, but that they actually created a kind of African identity that added a more political aspect to this nationalism. Settlers organized themselves into political movements and parties that called for Angola’s political autonomy and even its independence. However, settler nationalism was repressed by the Portuguese government and rejected by the black nationalist movements. White settlers were unable to impose their political views, and as a result of Angola’s violent independence process, a large proportion of them left the country in 1975.