Angola Emigration and Immigration

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Online Records

• 1878-1960 UK and Ireland, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960 at Ancestry - index & images ($)
• 1890-1960 Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960 at Findmypast - index & images ($)
• United States Immigration Online Genealogy Records

Finding the Town of Origin in Angola

If you are using emigration/immigration records to find the name of your ancestors' town in Angola, see Angola Finding Town of Origin for additional research strategies.

Angola Emigration and Immigration

"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country.
Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Historical Background

• The Portuguese established their primary early trading post at Soyo, which is now the northernmost city in Angola. Paulo Dias de Novais founded São Paulo de Loanda (Luanda) in 1575 with a hundred families of settlers and four hundred soldiers.
• The Portuguese established several other settlements, forts and trading posts along the Angolan coast, principally trading in Angolan slaves for plantations. Local slave dealers provided a large number of slaves for the Portuguese Empire, usually in exchange for manufactured goods from Europe. This part of the Atlantic slave trade continued until after Brazil's independence in the 1820s.
• The Berlin Conference in 1884–1885 set the colony's borders, delineating the boundaries of Portuguese claims in Angola. Trade between Portugal and its African territories rapidly increased, leading to increased development, and a wave of new Portuguese immigrants.
• Portugal's refusal to address increasing Angolan demands for self-determination gradually evolved into a protracted war of independence that between persisted between 1961 and 1975.
• The National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) recruited from Bakongo refugees in Zaire. Benefiting from particularly favourable political circumstances in Léopoldville, and especially from a common border with Zaire, Angolan political exiles were able to build up a power base among a large expatriate community from related families, clans, and traditions.
• It is estimated that Angola was host to 12,100 refugees and 2,900 asylum seekers by the end of 2007. 11,400 of those refugees were originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who arrived in the 1970s.
• As of 2008, there were an estimated 400,000 Democratic Republic of the Congo migrant workers, at least 220,000 Portuguese, and about 259,000 Chinese living in Angola.
• Since 2003, more than 400,000 Congolese migrants have been expelled from Angola.
• Prior to independence in 1975, Angola had a community of approximately 350,000 Portuguese, but the vast majority left after independence and the ensuing civil war. However, Angola has recovered its Portuguese minority in recent years; currently, there are about 200,000 registered with the consulates, and increasing due to the debt crisis in Portugal and the relative prosperity in Angola.
• The Chinese population stands at 258,920, mostly composed of temporary migrants.
• Also, there is a small Brazilian community of about 5,000 people.

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