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1460 Antonio and Bartolomeo da Noli, Genovese navigators in the
service of Portugal, claim the Cape Verde Islands. The Islands
were officially described 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 or Phoenicians centuries before the
arrival of the Europeans. The Portuguese explorer Jaime Cortesao
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 Ilha do Sal. Whatever the case may have been there was no
population sufficiently well established to resist complete penetration
by the Portuguese.
1462 King Afonso V of Portugal granted the archipelago to his
brother Prince Fernando who later divided the island of Santiago
between two land grantees (donatarios). European settlement began at
Ribeira Grande ("the great stream") on the leeward side of
Santiago Island which offered a reliable fresh water supply and a
moderately protected harbor. An assortment of Portuguese exiles and
reprieved convicts, Genovese and Flemish adventurers and Sephardic
Jews were included among the first European settlers.
1466 Settlers in Cape Verde from the Algarve region of southern
Portugal petition the Crown and receive authorization to trade in
slaves. In 1469 the first Crown "contract of lease" for buying
and trading in slaves is issued. The Royal Warrant of 1472 gives
"existing inhabitants" (moradores estantes) of Santiago the
privilege of being able to " have slaves, male and female, to work
for them, to enable them to live and settle better". Portugal
granted the authority to trade anywhere in Western Africa except
Arguim, on the Mauritanian coast. The mainland Africans forced
into bondage and taken to Cape Verde tended to be Balanta, Papel,
Bijago and Mende peoples from the Guine Coast. The only
restrictions imposed on the Cape Verdean colonists by the Crown was a
duty of 25% on all imports from the Coast and strict adherence to
the ancient embargo on the sale of arms, iron, ships, and naval
equipment to "heathens".
Many of the early white settlers had been banished to Cape Verde
without their families and formed liaisons with slave women, increasing
the mulatto population sector. Some of the settlers or their mulatto
offspring crossed over to Upper Guinea and formed a class of middlemen
(lancados) who would play a pivotal role in expanding the slave trade
and in establishing the "place" of Cape Verdeans in economic history
of West Africa. Many of these middlemen would marry African women
to solidify their social position within various West African
societies. Portuguese political and economic interests in the region
most often overlapped with those of the lan«ados.
1469 - Fernando Gomes, a Lisbon merchant, granted exclusive
rights over the trade in slaves, gold and other valuables of the
Guinea Coast on the condition that he "discover" 100 leagues of
the coast and pay a fixed sum to the Crown for each of the five years
of this contract. The area of the coast facing Cape Verde was exempt
from his domain, along with that near the fortress of Arguim, the
first having been allotted to Santiago traders. In 1472, Gomes
succeeded in getting the Crown to expand the scope of his individual
trading contract by restricting trade by Cape Verdeans only to Cape
Verdean products. Partnerships between Cape Verdeans and foreigners
were forbidden. This system of would continue until the
mid-seventeenth century.
Slaves sold on the Santiago slave market were categorized in three
types. In order of ascending sale value, these were bocais [from
bocal: ignorant], slaves recently imported who spoke only their
native languages; ladinos, slaves of longer residence in Santiago who
had learned Kriolu, had been baptized and "taught to work"; and
naturais [natural: native-born], those born in Cabo Verde
(Carreira 1972: 267 cited in Meintel)
1475-1479 War of the Spanish Succession. Castellan ships
pillage Ribeira Grande and carries off many white inhabitants for
ransom and blacks to be sold again into slavery.
Historical interpretations and historical accuracy are not always one
and the same. Scholarly research has recently been reported by Peter
Dickson and commented on by John Hebert, senior specialist in
Hispanic bibliography in the Hispanic division, Library of Congress
in Washington, DC. (Washington Post, Oct. 12, 1995:
C5) which raises serious questions and may eventually compell us to
dramatically alter our description of the context of events which led to
the "discovery" of America by Christopher Columbus. These recent
findings shed new light on the life of Columbus before 1492.
1478 Christopher Columbus married into the most powerful family in
Portugal, the Braganza-Norona clan. By 1485 most of the
Braganza family (Columbus's in-laws) had fled Portugal for
Spain. They plotted to kill Portugal's King Joao but were
unsuccessful. The King responded by executing the twelve
conspirators, ten of whom were related to Columbus's wife. No
evidence has been found to implicate Columbus in the conspiracy.
King Joao refused to finance Columbus's voyage of exploration.
Spain's Queen Isabel showed a particular interest in Columbus and
agreed to finance his voyages. The mother of Queeen Isabel was
Portuguese by birth and of the House of Branganza and distantly
related to the wife of Columbus.
The web of European political relationships and the ideological
underpinnings of European expansion played a major role in setting the
stage for social and economic development in Cape Verde and everywhere
else that the European explorers set foot.
In addition to family relationships it is enlightening to examine the
"political theology" of Spain, Portugal, England, France and
most of Europe's royal courts at that time. Columbus wrote of being
"an instrument of God in recovering of Jerusalem.... The royal
mission was presented as divine, universal and directed toward uniting
the world under a single ruler, who was to recapture Jerusalem from
the Moslems, thereby fulfilling history's culmination and end. This
vision was put out competitively by Europe's royal courts, but
Castile was seen to be implementing it most literally at the time - in
instituting the Inquisition, conquering the Muslim KIngdom of
Grenada, and, in tandem with sending out Columbus in 1492,
expelling the Jews. (Peggy K. Liss, Washington Post Oct.
19, 1995 p. A22).
1479 The Treaty of Al‡acovas and later the Treaty of
Tordesillas (1494) established the territorial domains of
Portugal and Spain along a longitudinal line 370 leagues west of
Cape Verde.
1483 The first French ships reach Cape Verde.
1492 Christopher Columbus, the Genovese navigator, lands in the
Bahamas and claims the "new lands of the western seas" for Spain.
In 1498 Columbus stops in Cape Verde for provisions on his third
voyage to America. During the same period the expulsion of Jews from
Iberia began. Some would eventually migrate to Cape Verde.
1495 Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Church is established in
Ribeira Grande (Cidade Velha), the first permanent place of
Christian worship in sub-Saharan Africa. Later, a seminary,
convent and eventually the first cathedral in Africa were built.
1497 Vasco DaGama, the Portuguese navigator, stops in Cape
Verde on a voyage of exploration which would take his ships around
Africa and on to India.
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