The End of Portugal's Empire and Southern Africa's Settler Colonies

Portugal had fought colonial wars in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau since the early 1960s, and the human and economic cost of these conflicts directly fueled the military discontent that produced the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974 in Lisbon, an almost entirely bloodless uprising led by the Armed Forces Movement that overthrew Portugal's Estado Novo dictatorship. The revolution precipitated the immediate recognition of independence for Portugal's African colonies: Guinea-Bissau, which had unilaterally declared independence in 1973, was formally recognized in 1974; Mozambique gained independence on 25 June 1975 under Samora Machel and the Marxist-oriented FRELIMO; and Angola gained independence on 11 November 1975, immediately plunging into civil war among the rival MPLA, FNLA, and UNITA movements, a conflict that drew in Cuban and South African troops and dragged on, with interruptions, until 2002.