Cape Verde Islands
The Cape Verde Islands, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an archipelago of ten volcanic islands with a combined land area of about 4,033 square kilometres between 600 and 850 kilometres west of Cape Verde. In the north, the Barlavento (Windward) Islands include Santo Antão, São Vicente, the uninhabited Santa Luzia, São Nicolau, Sal, and Boa Vista, and the islets of Raso and Branco. The Sotavento (Leeward) Islands include Maio, Santiago, Fogo, and Brava and the three Rombos islets—Grande, Luís Carneiro, and Cima.
While the islands may have been known in ancient times — they may have been the place where Hanno the Navigator slew two female Gorillai, and there are possible references in works by Pomponius Mela, Pliny the Elder, Marinus of Tyre and Ptolemy — the archipelago was uninhabited until Portuguese navigators arrived off their shores in the 1450s.
Early visitors sailing in Henry the Navigator's service included Diogo Gomes, Diogo Afonso, the Venetian Alvise Cadamosto, the Genoese Antoniotto Usodimare and the da Nol brothers (António and Bartólomeu). Portuguese settlers followed after Afonso V's brother Fernando received the archipelago as a fiefdom in 1462, establishing the first permanent European settlement in the tropics. The first colonists included Portuguese, Genoese, and Flemish adventurers, reprieved convicts, and Sephardic Jews fleeing persecution. João II and Manuel I exiled thousands of Jews to São Tomé, Príncipe, and Cape Verde in 1496.
A convenient location off the African coast on the trade routes between Africa, Europe, and America saw the islands prosper through the 16th and 17th centuries. Slave plantations grew sugar and cotton for consumption in Portugal, while salt works on Maio, Boa Vista, and Sal supplied cod fishermen working in Atlantic waters. While the islands' prosperity encouraged visits by various unwelcome visitors, including Francis Drake and Algerian corsairs, as Portugal's competitors increasingly dominated the Atlantic trade, they became a backwater, supplying American slave ships and whalers as the plantation economy diminished in importance.
A further period of economic decline followed the Royal Navy's successful campaign to suppress the slave trade, British and many of the inhabitants emigrated. However, the islands' location meant that they continued to provide a useful stopover point on the Atlantic's major shipping routes. A British coaling station established in 1839 and submarine telegraph links to Brazil and West Africa played a part in the islands' reviving fortunes, but shipping traffic bound for South America, the Cape of Good Hope and points beyond did more. In 1890, ships offloaded more than 650 million metric tons of coal at the island's chief port; 2,264 ships carrying 344,907 persons carried it away.
From there, the islands' fortunes waned. The Suez Canal diverted much of the eastbound traffic, improved port facilities at Dakar and Las Palmas in the Canary Islands diverted more shipping as oil replaced coal as the main fuel for shipping. Periodic famines encouraged large-scale migration as Portuguese authorities forbade reports on the death toll or even the use of the word "famine" in the press.
While the nationalist movements that emerged after World War II may not have been as militant as those on the African mainland, and there was no armed conflict in Cape Verde, a successful guerilla campaign in nearby Guinea-Bissau compelled Portugal to accept independence for Cape Verde as well. After around five hundred years as a Portuguese colony, the islands became the independent Republic of Cape Verde in 1975.
Image: The Cape Verde Islands: Ilhas do Barlavento and Ilhas do Sotavento with a location map showing their position. (Central Intelligence Agency, National Archives at College Park - Cartographic, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cape_Verde_-_DPLA_-_78b229611209a56e579c3481b42909ab.jpg
Sources:
Encyclopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/place/Cabo-Verde
Wikipedia (Cape Verde: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Verde)
Wikipedia (History of Cape Verde
Links:
Hanno the Navigator
Pomponius Mela
Pliny the Elder
Marinus of Tyre
Claudius Ptolemy
Diogo Gomes
Diogo Afonso
Alvise Cadamosto
Antoniotto Usodimare
António and Bartólomeu da Nol
Afonso V
Fernando
Sephardic Jews
João II
Manuel I
São Tomé
Príncipe,
Francis Drake
Algerian corsairs
Suez Canal
Dakar
Las Palmas
Canary Islands
Guinea-Bissau
