Mozambique’s path to independence followed a similar path to independence as the other European-colonized countries. Portuguese explorers that landed in Mozambique, on the southeastern coast of Africa, found a hunter-gatherer society ready to be exploited, and Mozambique’s people featured prominently in the slave trade, as well as the production of minerals, often through the use of slave labor. Eventually, the people organized and formed an armed rebellion. For Mozambique, it just took a little longer than most.

On this day, June 25, in 1975, after an armed campaign lasting more than a decade, Mozambique and Portugal concluded a treaty granting independence to the African nation.

As often happens with young nations, Mozambique soon plunged into a bloody civil war, during which more than one and a half million refugees fled to neighboring countries. At the conclusion of the war a democratically-elected government took over and began initiating economic reforms to improve the country’s quality of life. By the 1990s, many of the refugees who fled during the civil war began returning.