PRINCIPAL COMBATANTS: Portuguese West Africa (Angola)
vs. Portugal
PRINCIPAL THEATER(S): Portuguese West Africa (Angola) DECLARATION: No formal declaration
MAJOR ISSUES AND OBJECTIVES: Portuguese West Africa
sought independence from Portugal
OUTCOME: Angola became independent from Portugal APPROXIMATE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF MEN UNDER ARMS:
Portugal, 55,000; Angola, unknown
CASUALTIES: Portugal, 4,000; Angola, 25,000 guerrillas
and 50,000 civilians
TREATIES: No treaty until the Treaty of Bicesse, May 1,
1991
In 1960 the Belgian Congo became independent and renamed itself Zaire. Inspired by this change, Portuguese West Africa (Angola) was soon a hotbed of rebellion. In February 1961 the Movimento Popular Libertação de Angola (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, MPLA), began a revolt against the colonial government of Portugal. Founded in 1956 with the help of the clandes- tine Portuguese Communist Party and led by Dr. Agostino Neto (1922–79), the MPLA drew support from the Soviet Union and was based at first in Brazzaville before moving to Zambia in 1965. From there it staged its raids into east- ern Angola as the revolt spread. Meanwhile, another move- ment, founded in 1957 and headed by Holden Roberto (b. 1923) was leading the revolt in northern Angola. By 1966 it was called the Frente National de Libertação de Angola (National Front for the Liberation of Angola, FNLA). It drew its support from the Bakongo and rural Mbundu, was based in Zaire, and was supported by both the United States and China. A third movement, the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, UNITA), led by Jonas Savimbi (1934–2002), was also established by 1966, although, outside some nominal aid from the Chi- nese, it lacked both foreign backing and bases of opera- tion. Combating the three liberation movements in
Portuguese West Africa as well as those in Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau required more and more of Portugal’s resources, and by the late 1960s approximately 50 percent of the country’s annual budget was consumed by its mili- tary actions in Africa. In Angola, at least, Portugal achieved some success. The deep divisions among the three libera- tion movements led them to fight each other as well as the Portuguese, who had the upper hand by the early 1970s. By 1974 all three guerrilla groups had been chased out of the country.
Then, with public dissatisfaction over the brutal con- duct of the war growing in Portugal, a group of worried army officers overthrew the national government of Anto- nio de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970) in Lisbon on April 25, 1974, and created a government that was willing to abandon the fight to retain control of Portuguese West Africa. A condition of relinquishing the fight, however, was a plan for orderly governmental succession. The three liberation organizations formed a coalition on two differ- ent occasions, but neither attempt at reconciliation was long-lived. When the Portuguese withdrew in November 1975, the pro-Western UNITA and FNLA, supported by South Africa, were still engaged in a struggle against the MPLA, which received troops, technical support, and arms from Cuba and the Soviet Union. Representatives met in Alvor in March and April of 1975 and briefly formed a coalition government under the MPLA’s Neto, before falling out again. By February 1976 the MPLA, under Dr. Agostinho Neto (1922–79), was in control of the government and had been recognized by the Organiza- tion of African Unity (OAU) as the legal government of an independent Angola.
See also ANGOLANCIVILWAR; GUINEA-BISSAUANWAR
OF INDEPENDENCE; MOZAMBICAN CIVIL AND GUERRILLA
WARS; MOZAMBICANWAR OFINDEPENDENCE.
Further reading: Fernando Andresen Guimaraes, The
Origins of the Angolan Civil War: Foreign Intervention and Domestic Political Conflict (Basingstoke, U.K.: Macmillan,
1998); Tony Hodges, Angola from Afro-Stalinism to Petro-
Diamond Capitalism (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2001); Elaine Windrich, The Cold War Guerrilla:
Jonas Savimbi, the U.S. Media, and the Angolan War (West-
port, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992).
An Lushan’s Rebellion
(755–763)PRINCIPAL COMBATANTS: The renegade general An Lushan
vs. China’s Tang (T’ang) dynasty
PRINCIPAL THEATER(S): North China DECLARATION: None
MAJOR ISSUES AND OBJECTIVES: Factions at court, vying
for power and influence, prevented An Lushan from assuming the position of prime minister; the incensed An Lushan sought to topple the Tangs, declare a new
dynasty, and place himself on the throne; Loyalists fought to defend the Tang dynasty and restore its ousted emperor.
OUTCOME: An Lushan was murdered, the six-year
rebellion was at length quelled, and the Tang returned to power. The revolt, however, signalled the decline of the Tang dynasty, not only highlighting the civil and military deficiencies of the dynasty but becoming an instrument in its decline.
APPROXIMATE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF MEN UNDER ARMS:
Rebels, est. 200,000; imperial troops, unknown
CASUALTIES: Unknown TREATIES: None
In China during the middle of the eighth century, the Tang dynasty reached new heights during the long rule of Xuanzong (Hsuan-tsung) (685–762). Under his patronage China experienced an explosion of literature and the arts. The Middle Kingdom seemed truly the center of the uni- verse, as the Chinese had always imagined it to be, and to the emperor’s court in Changan there flocked not just Chi- nese historians, scholars, poets, dramatists, and entertain- ers, but foreign envoys, clerics, and traders offering tribute from countries all over Eurasia. For the first time in its history, China seemed to be truly opening itself to the out- side world under the man the Chinese people had begun to call informally Ming Huang, “the Brilliant Emperor.”
Opportunities abounded for the talented, the clever, and the ambitious, and not merely among the highborn. Neither were all foreign visitors to North China official dignitaries. Arab pearl divers, Mesopotamian adventurers, Turkish princes, Indian merchants, Japanese pilgrims, Malay pirates, and Tibetan youths all came to Tang China seeking glory or riches or freedom. Some found what they were looking for. A Sogdian merchant became the protec- tor of Annam, then under Chinese hegemony. An Oman gem dealer returned home with a gold-lidded, black porcelain vase containing a single goldfish with ruby eyes that smelled of musk and brought him 50,000 dinar. And an obese Turkish soldier of fortune joined the Tang army as a mercenary, rose to the rank of general, and was made mil- itary governor of three important outposts in the northeast. His name was An Lushan (703–757), and it would one day soon be written in Chinese blood.
The relative openness of China at the time helps to explain how a Persian-born nomad raised in Mongolia could rise to military prominence in the provinces, but to understand how An Lushan suddenly vaulted to center stage in Tang history, one needs to know something about the inner workings of the Chinese government and the peculiar power enjoyed by its generals. When Xuanzong first became emperor, he appointed members of China’s ancient northwestern aristocracy to be his close advisers, principally because he needed their support in order to
rule. But like the Tang emperors before him, he never trusted the arrogant nobles, and once he had consolidated his position he quickly reduced their numbers, relying instead on a corps of young, low-ranking scholars recruited directly through palace examinations to admin- ister his government. The power struggles that ensued between the aristocrats and the examination graduates increasingly disrupted the civil functions of government.
The emperor did nothing to stop the disputes. Instead, he made matters worse by using eunuchs from his harem as personal agents to circumvent both the scholars and the nobles. As the day-to-day operation of the govern- ment deteriorated, a weary Xuanzong withdrew altogether from the affairs of empire, seeking solace in the pleasures of the harem and in mystic religious studies that he believed held the secret to earthly immortality. A few lead- ing ministers ran the state, occasionally assuming dictato- rial powers. To complicate the situation even further, various of the emperor’s wives and concubines—the only ones who saw him with any frequency at all—began to meddle in public policy. The most persistent of them was Yang Guifei (Yang Kuei-fei; 703–757), who had been Xuan- zong’s son’s concubine before the emperor took her for himself. And Yang Guifei looked to the emperor’s soldiers for her allies.
A century before, when China had expanded into Central Asia, the Tang dynasts had reorganized their armed forces in order to deal more effectively with the hard-riding tribes of the steppes, creating a professional standing army and giving the field generals fighting dis- tant battles the autonomy they needed to ensure victory. In the heady times of triumph, no one paid much atten- tion when the generals recruited to their ranks nomads to help fight their former tribesmen, nor did Tang leaders stop to consider that the reforms would also give the gen- erals tremendous personal power. In the eighth century the power of the field generals grew greater still as a result of the domestic disarray. The emperor had appointed as his official adviser Yang Guozhong (Yang Kuo-chung) (d. 757), a favorite cousin of his omnipresent concubine, Yang Guifei. To check the growing influence of the new adviser and his concubine cousin, the powerful Chinese prime minister, Li Linfu (d. 752), from the old northwest- ern aristocracy and then the dominant figure in the Chi- nese government, began to court favor with the generals of the northern armies, especially those of foreign descent, hoping they would prove more tractable than Chinese officers. One of those generals was An Lushan.
In 751 the Khitan Mongols invaded China. Chiefly through the efforts of An Lushan, the Tangs were able to repel the barbarians, thereby earning him notice at court and leading Li Linfu quickly to invite him to the capital. A capable enough soldier, An Lushan was, or pretended to be, something of a social buffoon. Corpulent and loud, he cut quite a figure in sophisticated Changan. A favorite of
both the emperor and his consort, Yang Guifei, who enjoyed his clowning, he was once, three days after his birthday, sneaked into the harem wrapped in an enormous baby diaper. Such hanky panky led to rumors that he and Yang were lovers, but it was hardly likely Xuanzong would have shared her, or that An Lushan would have risked the emperor’s ire. Not that Yang was beyond intrigue, espe- cially if she could have seduced An Lushan away from Li Linfu’s influence. But whatever the nature of the intrigues she engaged in with the crude general, they came to an abrupt end when Li Linfu died. Immediately, An Lushan, the emperor’s favorite general, and Yang Guozhong, Yang’s cousin and the emperor’s closest personal adviser, began a bitter fight for the vacated prime minister’s post. The court seethed with subterfuge and dirty politics, while the aging emperor merely looked the other way.
Meanwhile, the country was falling apart. Onerous new taxes had been imposed to raise the enormous amounts of money needed to defend China’s borders against the Turks, Tibetans, and other northern tribes who threatened the seri- ously overextended empire. But the taxes were hardly enough to defray defense spending, and the shortfall in public funds made the overheated bureaucratic conflicts even worse. Given the hothouse harem atmosphere and the absentee emperor, no one was sure who ran the country. That was the situation when Yang Guozhong won the palace battle for the prime minister’s post, probably because An Lushan, whatever else he might have been, was still a foreigner. The enraged general launched a rebellion.
The fighting lasted more than seven years, from December 755 to January 763, and it tore China asunder. An Lushan first returned to his minions in the north, plan- ning to raise forces and march on Loyang, Xuanzhong’s capital in the east, near present-day Beijing. Though Yang Guozhong could attack and undermine the general at court, Yang did not fare so well with members of the mili- tary. Many of them flocked to An Lushan’s banner, espe- cially after he claimed to have received a secret command from the emperor to get rid of the new prime minister. With 200,000 troops he quickly overran the Yellow River Valley and seized Loyang. An Lushan, seriously ill, perhaps with diabetes, remained in Loyang while his army marched on Changan, the imperial capital. The general in charge of defending Changan, Ko Shuhan, and prime minister Yang were bitter rivals, and fearing a coup, Yang goaded Ko into taking the field against the rebels. The Tang army was routed, and the way to the city lay wide open. After a six- month siege, Changan fell to the rebels in 756. Xuanzong had already fled with his entourage, escorted by a contin- gent of imperial guards. In a mutinous mood, the guards halted on the road and forced Xuanzong to execute both Yang Guifei, his concubine, and Yang Guozhong, her cousin the prime minister. Then, Xuanzhong made his way to Chengdou (Ch’engku) in Sichuan (Szechwan) province, where he set up a court in exile. Back in Loyang, An An Lushan’s Rebellion 95
Lushan declared himself emperor of what he called the Greater Yen dynasty, and a number of prominent Tang offi- cials rushed to offer their support.
In the spring of 757, the imperial army counterat- tacked, retaking the imperial capital. In Loyang the rebel general, now nearly blind and extremely irascible, so ranted and raved that his attendants feared for their lives. Soon thereafter he lay dead, murdered by a eunuch slave with the connivance of his own son, An Qingxu (An Chingsu), who took command of the rebellion. There fol- lowed a bewildering series of assassinations and succes- sions, of resurgent loyalist attacks and rebel counterattacks, and of mayhem and pillage across the face of North China. At one point Tibetan raiders, emboldened by the Chinese chaos, swept into Changan and occupied the city for two weeks, looting and raping before they burned to the ground the former metropolitan center of Asia. It was a bitter civil war, one of the most violent in Chinese history and one whose outcome was in doubt almost to the end. Finally, government forces were able to subdue the rebels, and Xuanzong, nearing 80, exhausted, and wracked with grief over the loss of Yang Guifei, returned to Changan to die in 762 while his son Taizong (T’ai-tsung; 762–779), now emperor, struggled to rebuild an empire that existed in name only.
The struggle would go on for another century, during which the great generals who had helped crush the An Lushan rebellion would become warlords ruling over the provinces they had recovered and fighting constantly among themselves. The rebellion had permanently dam- aged the prestige of the Tangs, establishing for good the influence of strong military leaders, rather than scholars, at court. Though the Tangs would cling to the throne, their dynasty had begun its long decline, and their once rich, stable, far-flung empire had become a troubled, divided state spinning into decline.
See also CHINESEWAR WITHNANCHAO.
Further reading: Howard S. Levy, Biography of An Lu-
shan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960); E. G.
Pulleyblank, The Background of the Rebellion of An Lu-shan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955).