History of West Africa 1879-1918





Cape Verde 1456-1879



In 1456 Italian navigator LUIGI DA CADAMOSTO, in the service of the king of Portugal, discovered the uninhabited Cape Verde Islands and claimed them in the name of the King of Portugal. In 1462 Portuguese colonists settled; slaves were soon brought in from continental Africa. The original settlers consisted of exiles, convicts, Jews and adventurers; due to the lack of women immigrants from Europe, they took African women, creating a mulatto society. Soon, slaves outnumbered the free settlers (among them a few freed blacks). The Cape Verde islands lacked cultural institutions; the first church was built in 1495, even elementary education was accessible only to a tiny minority. Thus, the Kriolu language emerged, combining elements of Portuguese and of West African languages.
The Cape Verde islands became a major station in the Transatlantic slave trade, which supplied Brazil's sugar plantations and gold mines with African slaves. The Portuguese acquired their slaves at ports on the African coast, such as Cacheu and Bissau in PORTUGUESE GUINEA, an area which was administrated from Cape Verde until 1879. Slave trade was formally banned in 1830, a ban not enforced on the islands. Slavery was abolished in 1876.
Early on, a textile industry developed on Cape Verde; Verdean cloth was traded on Africa's west coast in exchange for slaves and for other goods. In the 1620es, English fishing vessels began to come to Cape Verde to pick up salt, vital for preserving fish caught in the North Atlantic; salt exports would become a vital part of the Verdean economy until into the late 19th century.
Cape Verde suffered from pirate raids, the first one during the Castilian War of Succession 1475-1479. French pirates struck in 1544, the British in the 1560es, 1582 and 1585, Dutch pirates in 1598. Only in 1596 were steps undertaken to fortify the island's main port.
The islands frequently suffered from drought and famine, at times from epidemic diseases and volcanic eruptions.
In the late 18th century, American whalers began to arrive; in 1818 the U.S. opened a consulate in Praia. Poverty on Cape Verde caused many young men to emigrate to the United States.






EXTERNAL
FILES 		Chronology of Cape Verde, by Raymond A. Almeida
Cape Verde, history of, from Infoplease
DOCUMENTS Flag of the Guinea Company, from FOTW
REFERENCE Shubi L. Ishemo, Forced Labour and Migration in Portuguese African Colonies, pp.162-165 in : Robin Cohen, The Cambridge Survey of World Migration, Cambridge : UP 1995, KMLA Lib.Sign. 304.809 C678c



This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted in 2001, last revised on May 23rd 2006

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