ABSTRACT
Cabinda is one of the more peculiar remnants of the European colonial era in Africa. 'Gerrymandering' among European powers in the late nineteenth century separated the enclave from Angola's contiguous land area. Interestingly, Cabinda (once dubbed the 'Portuguese Congo') and the surrounding micro-region have received relatively little consideration despite the enclave's iniquitous founding as a slaving zone as part of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and its more recent incarnation as a major producer of oil in sub-Saharan Africa. While Cabinda has been home to civil strife, albeit of a low-intensity since the 1960s, its parent state to the south, Angola, and its neighbors to the north and east, the Republic of Congo (ROC) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, formerly Zaire), have attracted much more international attention with regard to their respective civil conflicts.
