From 1870, Angola used stamps from its colonizers, Portugal, with and without overprints on them indicating their belonging to Angola. (Portugal often printed sort of generic colonial stamps, using overprints to distinguish the different denominations and locations of each.) In addition to the overprinted ones, there were several issues inscribed with Angola. Some of these were overprinted with ‘REPUBLICA’.
Through much of the twentieth century, Angola remained a Portuguese colony. In 1975, the newly-independent Republic of Angola began to issue its own stamps. Angolan stamps from most eras of the country’s philatelic history are easily accessible to collectors.