History of Cape Verde

In 1456, at the service of prince Henry the Navigator, Alvise Cadamosto, Antoniotto Usodimare (a Venetian and a Genoese captain, respectively) and an unnamed Portuguese captain, jointly discovered some of the islands. In the next decade, Diogo Gomes and António de Noli, also captains in the service of prince Henry, discovered the remaining islands of the archipelago. When these mariners first landed in Cape Verde, the islands were barren of people but not of vegetation. The Portuguese returned 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 Spain the Reconquista war was growing in its mission to re-Christianize Iberia and expel the Muslim Moors who had first arrived as invaders and colonists in the 8th century. In 1492 the Spanish Inquisition also emerged in its fullest expression of anti-Semitism. It 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. 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. Settlements started to appear on other islands, São Filipe was founded in 1500, Ponta do Sol, Ribeira Grande was founded in the mid 16th century, its first settlers also arrived in Madeira, Ribeira Brava on São Nicolau, Povoação Velha on Boa Vista was later founded, Furna, Nova Sintra on Brava and Palmeira on Sal.

The islands' prosperity brought them unwanted attention in the form of a sacking at the hands of pirates. After the Philippine Dynasty began, Sir Francis Drake first sacked Ribeira Grande in 1582 and then captured the island in 1585 and raided Cidade Velha, Praia and São Domingos, soon after they left. A year later in 1586, Cape Verde became a unified crown colony of Portugal.

A 1646 watercolour of Cidade Velha by Caspar Schmalkalden

Praia was later founded in 1613 on the plateau of the previous settlement. Pico do Fogo erupted in 1680, which resulted in the move of the population to Brava and other parts including Brazil. For a few years, the volcano was a natural lighthouse that sailors used. During the 17th century Algerian corsairs established a base in the Cape Verde islands. In 1617 they raided Madeira, stealing the church bells and taking 1,200 people captive.[5] As a result of the French Cassard expedition in 1712 in which Ribeira Grande was destroyed, the capital was partly moved to Praia in the east, which later became the capital in 1770. By 1740, the island was a supply point for American slave ships and whalers. This started a stream of immigration to the American colonies (now the United States), but only of men.

In 1747 the islands were hit with the first of several droughts and famines 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.

Textiles were smuggled and sold into black market, since its values were high and its origins were difficult to prove, between 1766 and 1776, 95,000 "barafulas" (Cape Verdean textiles) were imported to the Guinean coast.

Pico do Fogo again erupted in 1769. This was the last time it erupted from the top; further eruptions occurred in 1785 and 1799. Another famine started in 1774 in which 20,000 people starved, as Brava and Fogo were affected. Fogo's population dropped from 5,700 to 4,200 in around 1777. The first wave of emigration began from the islands of Brava and Fogo as American whaling ships visited these islands and took some residents for better life in the United States. In 1770, Praia became the colonial capital, and so remained up to Cape Verdean independence.

Though Portugal was neutral throughout the Anglo-French War and American Revolutionary War, British and French squadrons fought the Battle of Porto Praya off modern day Praia on 16 April 1781.

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  Map of the Cape Verde Islands, 1683 with its geographical features in Middle French
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  1747 French/Dutch map of Cape Verde by Jacques Nicolas Bellin
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  A depiction of Praia during the Battle of Porto Praya, 1781, by Marquis de Rossel

Porto Praya (now Praia) in 1806

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. 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 United States (U.S.) recruited crews from the islands of Brava and Fogo.

The last pirate raids including one in Sal Rei in 1815 led to building a couple of more forts across Cape Verde. Other settlements on some islands were founded later including Mindelo (first as Nossa Senhora da Luz) in 1795, Pedra de Lume on Sal in 1799 and Santa Maria at the start of 1830 on the same island. The colonial capital Praia underwent modernization in 1822 which expanded the plateau towards the north.

After Portugal lost Brazil, the British used Mindelo for coal refueling for ships and the city flourished in 1838, and attempt on moving the colonial capital from Praia were made, first a plan to move to Picos in 1831 at the time another famine struck Cape Verde, then in 1838, Mindelo, many people do not want to move the colonial capital, the capital stayed in Praia. Fogo erupted for the last times in the 19th century in 1847, 1852 and 1857. Mindelo grew as a result of ship refueling, two submarine telegraph cables were linked in 1874 to Pernambuco, Brazil, Cory Brothers later opened, another connected to Cameroon via Bathurst (now Banjul), the Gambia in 1885, Mindelo became the most used Transatlantic telegraph station for some time in 1912. A total of 669 ships were refueled each year at the port, it reached to 1,927 ships a decade later and then when gasoline fuel was started to be used especially boats, it never rivaled with the ports of Las Palmas of the Grand Canary or nearby Dakar in Senegal. The usage of coal dropped which lead to a coal strike in 1912 due to insufficient work, when the Great Depression began in 1930, ship activity ended.

Slavery was disappearing in Cape Verde, the first was São Vicente, then São Nicolau, Santo Antão, Boa Vista in 1867, the same time slave trade ended, later slavery ended throughout Cape Verde.

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  Capo Verdians in 1885
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  Port of Praia, 1899
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  Market of Praia, 1899
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  Maize mill, Praia, 1899
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  Square in Praia, 1899
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  Praia, 1899

Old postcard of Mindelo from the early 20th century

Praia and the locality of Gamboa or Cha das Aldeias in 1936

At the end of the 19th century, with the advent of the ocean liner, the island's 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 harbour, Mindelo (on the island of São Vicente) became an important commercial centre during the 19th century, mainly because the British used Cape Verde as a storage depot for coal which was bound for the Americas. The harbour area at Mindelo was developed by the British for this purpose. The island was made a coaling and submarine cable station, and there was plenty of work for local labourers. This was the golden period of the city, where it gained the cultural characteristics that made it the current cultural capital of the country. During World War II, the economy collapsed as the shipping traffic was drastically reduced. As the British coal industry went into decline in the 1980s, this source of income dried up, and Britain had to abandon its Cape Verdean interests — which ended up being the final strike to the highly dependent local economy.

During World War II, British ships were stationed in Mindelo, later with Winston Churchill's interest in Cape Verde, in April 1941, thousands of troops were stationed on the island. The famine in the nation worsened and struck when World War II was happening outside the Portuguese Empire between 1941 and 1942 and a second one from 1946 to 1948, it led to emigration of tens of thousands to Europe, some left to Senegal and São Tomé and Príncipe.

Espargos in the middle of the island was founded in the mid 20th century, it was founded in the late 1940s as an airport town, the last in the Portuguese era, in 1950, a number of flights rose, first Alitalia, then the Portuguese-Brazilian Friendship flight and South Africa Airways (SAA) in 1967 with the flights in London, the airline had to use the airport due to the international boycott of apartheid at the time. The last eruption in the colonial era was at Pico do Fogo in 1951 and was a small one.

In 1952, the Portuguese government planned to transfer over 10,000 settlers to the island of São Tomé in São Tomé and Príncipe, another Portuguese colony, to work in plantations instead of the Forros. Africans would come mainly from the islands of São Nicolau, Santiago, Santo Antão, Fogo and Brava. During the time that the two colonies became independent, many left to Europe and the United States, a few returned to Cape Verde, after, the Cape Verdean population would be moved to the nearby island of Príncipe, many Cape Verdean descendants, some with another descendant became elemented into the Príncipe Creole society.

In the lead-up to and during the Portuguese Colonial War, those planning and fighting in the armed conflict in Portuguese Guinea often linked the goal of liberation of Guinea-Bissau to the goal of liberation in Cape Verde. (For instance, in 1956, Amílcar and Luís Cabral founded the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde.)

Amílcar Cabral on a stamp of East Germany

Although the Cape Verdeans were treated badly by their colonial masters, Portuguese treatment of Cape Verdeans was distinct from their treatment of other colonized regions,[6] and the people of Cape Verde fared slightly better than Africans in other Portuguese colonies because of their lighter skin. A small minority received an education and Cape Verde was the first African-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, while 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. 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, acronym for the Portuguese Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde) was founded in 1956 by Amílcar Cabral and other pan-Africanists, and many Cape Verdeans fought for independence in Guinea-Bissau.[7]

In 1926 Portugal had become a rightist dictatorship which regarded the colonies as 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. The Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira 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.

As with other colonies in 1972, autonomy was granted and Portuguese Cape Verde held its only parliamentary elections in 1973, in which only those that were Portuguese citizens could vote. Out of a total population of 272,071, only 25,521 people registered to vote. A total of 20,942 people voted, giving a voter turnout of 82.1%. As the Portuguese constitution banned political parties at the time, the majority of candidates were put forward by the ruling People's National Action movement, although some civic associations were allowed to nominate candidates

After the Carnation Revolution on April 25, 1974, Cape Verde became more autonomous but continued to have a governor from overseas, later that post became High Commissioner. Widespread unrest forced the government to negotiate with the PAIGC, and agreements for an independent Cape Verde were on the table. Pedro Pires returned to Praia on October 13 after being exiled for over a decade. After his return, Portugal signed the 1975 Algiers Agreement. On July 5, at Praia, Portugal's Prime Minister Vasco Goncalves turned over power to National Assembly President Abilio Duarte, thus the colonial history of Cape Verde ended when Cape Verde become independent. However, there was no armed conflict in Cape Verde and ultimately independence for Cape Verde resulted from negotiation with Portugal.[8] However, the catalyst for the independence of Cape Verde was the PAIGC branch in Guinea-Bissau, which launched an ultimately successful war against the Portuguese in Guinea-Bissau, who eventually compelled Portugal to accept independence for Cape Verde.

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 state 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 António Mascarenhas Monteiro defeated the PAICV's candidate by 73.5% of the votes cast to 26.5%. He succeeded the country's first President, Aristides Pereira, who had served since 1975.

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 António 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.