History of Cape Verde
In typical ancient euhemerism, they suggested the islands as the place where the Carthaginian Hanno the Navigator slew two female "Gorillai".
Pliny, citing the Greek writer Xenophon of Lampsacus, placed the Gorgades at two days' travel from "Hesperu Ceras" (the westernmost part of the African continent, today called Cap-Vert).
During the next decade, Diogo Gomes and António de Noli (also captains in the service of Prince Henry) discovered the remaining islands of the archipelago.
The first settlers included Portuguese, Genoese, and Flemish adventurers; reprieved convicts; and Sephardic Jews fleeing persecution.
It spread to neighboring Portugal (as the Portuguese Inquisition), where King João II and Manuel I exiled thousands of Jews to São Tomé, Príncipe, and Cape Verde in 1496.
[8]: 108 The islands' prosperity encouraged sacking by pirates, particularly during the period of the Iberian Union 1580–1640, when Spain's enemies, the British, French, and Dutch, raided Portuguese colonies.
Sir Francis Drake sacked Ribeira Grande in 1582, captured the island in 1585 and raided Cidade Velha, Praia and São Domingos.
[10] Given the scarcity of capital for the region's development, the Portuguese Finance and Overseas Councils authorized the 1664 foundation of the Guinea Coast Company.
Praia, with its natural harbor, became the permanent capital in 1770 as the plantation economy diminished in importance relative to trade and naval supply.
[12][13][14] In 1758 the Grão Pará and Maranhão Company was granted a 20-year monopoly on all trade in Cape Verde and the West African coast.
[8]: 120 Its agents ruthlessly exploited the islands' inhabitants, commandeering panos, liquor, food, and other supplies regardless of droughts and famines.
[8]: 121 Construction of the Fortaleza de São José da Amura in Bissau cost more than 2,600 lives, most of them Cabo Verdean laborers.
Mindelo (originally Nossa Senhora da Luz) was founded in 1795, Pedra de Lume on Sal in 1799, and Santa Maria in early 1830 on the same island.
In the aftermarth of the Liberal Revolution of 1820, slave trader Manuel António Martins used the unrest to form a junta with other leading civilians, driving the governor out and ruling the islands until 1823.
When, in 1835, some conservative officers in the local garrison mutinied, the disaffected brancos accused Martins of abetting the plot and arrested him.
He attempted to start local fishing companies, where previously Cape Verdean had been banned from owning boats for fear of slaves escaping, but his successor cancelled the project.
[8]: 131–2 The British established a station in Mindelo to refuel ships with coal, water, and other supplies beginning in 1839, and the city flourished.
[citation needed] The system of morgados was abolished in 1863, and slavery in 1864, but much of the population remained dependent on their former masters, renting or sharecropping land.
Ships plying the South Atlantic to and from Africa and Asia stopped at Mindelo for coal, salt, meat, water, and wine imported from Madeira and the Azores.
Between 1900 and 1970, particularly during periods of famine when people were desperate, some 80,000 Cabo Verdeans were shipped to the plantations of Sao Tome e Principe, and more than 7,000 to Angola and Mozambique.
When gasoline began to be used as fuel, however, Mindelo could not rival the improved port facilities of Las Palmas on Grand Canary or nearby Dakar in Senegal.
The islands continued experiencing droughts, famines, epidemics and volcanic eruptions amid Portuguese government indifference.
[clarification needed] After the 25 April 1974 Carnation Revolution, Cape Verde became more autonomous but continued to have an overseas governor until that post became a high commissioner.
Pedro Pires (at the time still in Algeria) signed an agreement at the end of August that year to give Portuguese Guinea and Cape Verde both paths to independence, with the islands planned to hold a referendum on such in the near future.
[21] On 5 July in Praia, Portuguese Prime Minister Vasco Gonçalves transferred power to National Assembly President Abilio Duarte.
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 of that year, and campaigned for the right to contest the presidential election scheduled for December 1990.
MpD leader Ulisses Correia e Silva has been prime minister since the 2016 elections, when his party ousted the ruling PAICV for the first time in 15 years.
[25] In April 2021, the ruling party, led by Prime Minister Jose Ulisses Correia e Silva, maintained its parliamentary majority in the election.
[26] In October 2021, opposition candidate and former prime minister Jose Maria Neves of PAICV won Cape Verde's presidential election.
