by Candace Sobers
Abstract
This article considers one aspect of the international relations of the Angolan independence struggle: the prevalence in archives of records reflecting strong support for one of three rival Angolan national liberation movements (NLMs), the MPLA. Simple explanations, including the post-independence dominance of the MPLA in Angolan politics, offer unsatisfactory explanations for the wide appeal of the movement and its platform to non-Angolan attentive publics. The MPLA successfully courted the international community through principled signalling; carefully selected language calibrated to reflect the discourse of liberation that was prevalent at the time. This messaging was reinforced and recirculated among solidarity movements. This ‘signal cascade’ helped the MPLA gain the moral high ground in a contentious and divisive battle for political control. Investigating the roles of principled signalling as informal internationalism grants important insights into how national liberation movements, as non-state actors, engage with the wider international community to achieve specific political goals.
Candace Sobers is Assistant Professor, Global and International Studies, Carleton University, Canada. She specializes in twentieth century decolonization, movements of national liberation, and global Third World revolutionary internationalism, with a specific focus on African independence movements. Her current book in preparation traces the global efforts to support, and to obstruct, Angolan independence in the 1970s.