Cape Verde Islands
Cape Verde Islands
Cape Verde Islands, a group of volcanic islands with a population (2006 estimate) of 485,000 in the Atlantic Ocean, 400 miles west of Senegal. Uninhabited when they were first visited by Portuguese sailors in 1456, the Cape Verde Islands became the first Portuguese colony in Africa in 1462. Because of an arid climate, they had relatively little agricultural potential, although the Portuguese tried to make plantation crops viable. Some Europeans settled there, including exiles of various sorts and Flemish colonists, but the majority of the people were Africans, most brought as slaves from the mainland. They created a cotton-cloth industry whose unique products were much valued in the African trade. Some free Africans and political refugees of noble rank also came to the island, and the island's political elite and its major landowners were primarily of mixed race (mestizos).
Cape Verde's primary value was as a way station for Europeans trading in Africa and sailing to American and Asian locations, thanks to its prevailing winds and currents. Its location and arid climate made its inhabitants often turn to maritime pursuits, as crews on merchant ships and whalers, and to immigration, especially to Portugal, Brazil, and North America.
In the 1950s local inhabitants who resented the privileges given to metropolitan Portuguese in the government and economy developed an independence party linked to Portuguese Guinea. The Portuguese revolution of 1974 resulted in the freedom of all its African colonies. Cape Verde became an independent republic on 5 July 1975.
See alsoPortuguese Empire .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Batalha, Luís. The Cape Verdean Diaspora in Portugal: Colonial Subjects in a Postcolonial World. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004.
Broecke, Pieter van den., and J.D La Fleur. Pieter van den Broecke's Journal of Voyages to Cape Verde, Guinea and Angola, 1605–1612. London: Hakluyt Society, 2000.
Langworthy, Mark, and Timothy J. Finan. Waiting for Rain: Agriculture and Ecological Imbalance in Cape Verde. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 1997.
Lobban, Richard. Cape Verde: Crioulo Colony to Independent Nation. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995.
Santos, Maria Emília Madeira, and António Correia e Silva. História geral de Cabo Verde. v. 2-3. Lisboa: Centro de Estudos de História e Cartografia Antiga, Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical; Praia: Instituto Nacional da Cultura de Cabo Verde, 1995.
John Thornton