History of Cape Verde

The history of Cape Verde (the Gorgades in ancient time) is dominated by three overriding facts: there were no people of any sort on the islands when the Portuguese first arrived; the environment has become increasingly fragile over the centuries, largely due to the impact of people and overgrazing; and it's farther from the African mainland and closer to the Americas than any other African country. It's hardly surprising, therefore, that Cape Verde developed along somewhat different lines from the rest of Africa.

Early visitors

The first written record of Cape Verde can be found in the works "De choreographia" by Pomponius Mela and "Historia naturalis" by Pliny the Elder. They called the islands "Gorgades" in remembering the home of the mythical [[Gorgo]) killed by Perseus and afterwards - in typically ancient euhemerism - interpreted (against the written original statement) as the site where the Carthaginian Hanno slew two female "Gorillai" and brought their skins into the temple of the female deity Tanit (the Carthaginian Juno) in Carthage.

According to Pliny the Elder the Greek Xenophon Lampsacenus states that the Gorgades (Cape Verde) are situated two days from "Hesperu Ceras" - today called Cap Vert, the westernmost part of the African continent. According to Pliny the Elder and his citation by Solinus the sea voyage time from Atlantis (Madeira) crossing the Gorgades to the islands of the Ladies of the West (Hesperides) is around 40 days.

Nethertheless these islands are not mentionned in the cartographical work by Claudius Ptolemaeus.

European discovery and settlement

The portuguese explorers rediscovered the islands in 1456 or 1460 and described the islands as "uninhabited". However, given the prevailing winds and ocean currents in the region, the islands may well have been visited by Moors or Wolof, Serer, or perhaps Lebu fishermen from the Guine Coast. Folklore suggests that the islands may have been visited by Arabs, too, centuries before the arrival of the Europeans. The Portuguese explorer Jaime Cortesão reported a story that Arabs were known to have visited an island which they referred to as "Aulil" or "Ulil" where they took salt from naturally occurring salinas. Some believe they may have been referring to Sal Island.

A recent fable (the 1421 hypothesis) by Gavin Menzies stands that the chinese explorer Zheng He has reached the islands in 1420 (the most known part of the theory is about the hypotesis of this chinese navigator from the 15th century have already discovered the America before of European navigator Colombo).

Whatever the case may have been, there was no population sufficiently well established to resist complete penetration by the Portuguese.

In 1456, Cadamosto discovered some of the islands. In the next decade, Diogo Dias and António Noli, captains in the service of prince Henry the Navigator, discovered the rest of the archipelago. When these mariners first landed in Cape Verde, the islands were barren of people but not of vegetation. Seeing the islands today, you find it hard to imagine that they were once sufficiently verde (green) to entice the Portuguese to return six years later to the island of São Tiago to found Ribeira Grande (now Cidade Velha), in 1462 -- the first permanent European settlement city in the tropics.

In Iberia the Reconquista movement was growing in its mission to recover Catholic lands from the Muslim Moors who had first arrived in the 8th century. It was however in 1492 that the Spanish Inquisition emerged in its fullest expression of anti-Semitism. This social pathology quickly spread to neighboring Portugal where King João II and especially Manuel I in 1496, decided to exile thousands of Jews to São Tomé, Príncipe, and Cape Verde.

The Portuguese soon brought slaves from the West African coast to do the hard labour. Positioned on the great trade routes between Africa, Europe, and the New World, the archipelago prospered from the transatlantic slave trade, in the 16th century.

The islands' prosperity brought them unwanted attention in the form of a sacking at the hands of many pirates including England's Sir Francis Drake, who in 1582 and 1585 sacked Ribeira Grande. After a French attack in 1712, the city declined in importance relative to Praia, which became the capital in 1770.

Decadence

Droughts and famines

In 1747 the islands were hit with the first of the many droughts that have plagued them ever since, with an average interval of five years. The situation was made worse by deforestation and overgrazing, which destroyed the ground vegetation that provided moisture. Three major droughts in the 18th and 19th centuries resulted in well over 100,000 people starving to death. The Portuguese government sent almost no relief during any of the droughts.

Abolition of the slave trade

The 19th-century decline of the lucrative slave trade was another blow to the country's economy. The fragile prosperity slowly vanished. Cape Verde's colonial heyday was over.

Emigration to USA

Main article: Cape Verdean immigration history in the United States

It was around this time that Cape Verdeans started emigrating to New England. This was a popular destination because of the whales that abounded in the waters around Cape Verde, and as early as 1810 whaling ships from Massachusetts and Rhode Island in the US recruited crews from the islands of Brava and Fogo.

Mindelo's Harbour

At the end of the 19th century, with the advent of the ocean liner, the islands' position astride Atlantic shipping lanes made Cape Verde an ideal location for resupplying ships with fuel (imported coal), water and livestock. Because of its excellent harbor, Mindelo (on the island of São Vicente) became an important commercial centre during the 19th century. The island was made a coaling and submarine cable station.

Persistent drawbacks

Still, the islands continued suffering from frequent drought and famine, at times from epidemic diseases and volcanic eruptions, and the Portuguese government did nothing. Thousands of people died of starvation during the first half of the 20th century. With World War II the economy collapsed as the shipping traffic drastically falls.

Nationalism

Although the Cape Verdeans were treated badly by their colonial masters, they fared slightly better than Africans in other Portuguese colonies because of their lighter skin. A small minority received an education; Cape Verde was the first Portuguese colony to have a school for higher education. By the time of independence, a quarter of the population could read, compared to 5% in Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau).

This largesse ultimately backfired on the Portuguese, however, as literate Cape Verdeans became aware of the pressures for independence building on the mainland. Although the nationalist movement appeared less fervent in Cape Verde than in Portugal's other African holdings, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) was founded in 1956 by Amílcar Cabral and other pan-africanists, and many Cape Verdeans fought for independence in Guinea-Bissau. But in 1926, Portugal had became a rightist dictatorship which regarded the colonies an economic frontier, to be developed in the interest of Portugal and the Portuguese. Frequent famine, unemployment, poverty and the failure of the Portuguese government to address these issues caused resentment. And the Portuguese dictator Salazar wasn't about to give up his colonies as easily as the British and French had given up theirs. After World War II, Portugal was intent to hold on to its former colonies, since 1951 called overseas territories. When most former African colonies gained independence in 1957/1964, the Portuguese still held on. Consequently, following the Pijiguiti Massacre, the people of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau fought one of the longest African liberation wars.

After the fall (Apr., 1974) of the fascist regime in Portugal, widespread unrest forced the government to negotiate with the PAIGC, and in July 5, 1975, Cape Verde finally gained independence from Portugal.

Post-Independence

Immediately following a November 1980 coup in Guinea-Bissau (Portuguese Guinea declared independence in 1973 and was granted de jure independence in 1974), relations between the two countries became strained. Cape Verde abandoned its hope for unity with Guinea-Bissau and formed the African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV). Problems have since been resolved, and relations between the countries are good. The PAICV and its predecessor established a one-party system and ruled Cape Verde from independence until 1990.

Responding to growing pressure for a political opening, the PAICV called an emergency congress in February 1990 to discuss proposed constitutional changes to end one-party rule. Opposition groups came together to form the Movement for Democracy (MpD) in Praia in April 1990. Together, they campaigned for the right to contest the presidential election scheduled for December 1990. The one-party state was abolished September 28, 1990, and the first multi-party elections were held in January 1991. The MpD won a majority of the seats in the National Assembly, and the MpD presidential candidate Antonio Mascarenhas Monteiro defeated the PAICV's candidate by 73.5% of the votes cast to 26.5%. He succeeded the country's first president, who had served since 1975, Aristides Pereira. Legislative elections in December 1995 increased the MpD majority in the National Assembly. The party held 50 of the National Assembly's 72 seats. A February 1996 presidential election returned President Mascarenhas Monteiro to office. The December 1995 and February 1996 elections were judged free and fair by domestic and international observers.

In the presidential election campaign of 2000 and 2001, two former prime ministers, Pedro Pires and Carlos Veiga were the main candidates. Pires was the prime minister during the PAICV regime, while Veiga served as prime minister during most of Monteiro's presidency, stepping aside only when it came time for campaigning. In what might have been one of the closest races in electoral history, Pires won by 12 votes, he and Veiga each receiving nearly half the votes.

External links

• São Thiago de Cabo Verde - Article from the now public domain Catholic Encyclopedia on Cape Verde.
• History of Cape Verde - Offers a history of Cape Verde from 1462 to the present.
• Cape Verde Historical Timeline by Raymond Almeida. alternative site