Final Paper—Angola
CAS 4703-997
KatieBeth Gardner, Gard0130
4 May 2014
A developing nation, Angola sits on the Western coast of Africa surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the neighboring countries of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Zambia to the east, and Namibia to the south. While Angola currently enjoys peace and stability, the country has faced times of crisis in its recent and not so recent past. In his work Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, American scientist and author, Jared Diamond, proposes a five-point framework to consider when investigating societal collapse. These five factors influencing societal collapse include human impact on the environment, climate change, hostile neighbors, decreased support by friendly neighbors and allies, and a society’s response to its problems or failure to take action (Diamond, 2005). While Diamond makes an interesting argument with his five-factor framework, the unique history of Angola and the effects of years of colonial rule, as well as both internal and external conflicts, more likely led the nation to periods of crisis rather than any of Diamond’s five factors that we will consider throughout this paper.
The year was 1482 when the Portuguese first landed in present-day northern Angola. What they found when they began to explore the Kingdom of the Congo was a robust population of approximately 50,000 people in Mbanza Congo, the capital, alone (Michigan State University, 2012). These people, mostly Bantu peoples, were decedents of Khoisan hunter-gatherers, or the earliest known modern human inhabitants of the area that most likely migrated to the area from the surrounding areas of present-day Republic of Cameroon and the Sudan. Neigh...
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...or framework of society collapse. Many of the past materials I have studied during my time at the University of Oklahoma lead me to critically assess the situation in Angola and the relation to Diamond’s five factor framework including: International Organizations and Aid by Kelly-Kate S. Pease, The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer, Intercultural Communication: Globalization and Social Justice by Kathryn Sorrells, and HON 3993-003 Course Packet by Adrianna Pritchard. In my future career, my experiences with this course will help me make ethical decisions as a leader within my organization, as well as express my thoughts, ideas, and opinions articulately in a concise manner. As I move forward to the next chapter of my life, I will draw back to my experiences with this course to lead a more sustainable lifestyle and consider the implications of my lifestyle on others.