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1804 Drought and famine conditions in all of the Islands lasts for
two years.
1808 United States officially abolishes the importation of
slaves. However, the institution of slavery would continue in the
U.S. until President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation
Proclamation in 1865.
1810 Drought and famine in all of the Islands. High mortality.
1811 (December 27) Many people protest against new taxes
enacted to support the militia in Santiago. The leaders of the
protest were deported as prisoners to the Governor to Brazil.
Barcelos reports that the authorities "did not trust the creole
soldiers because on the day of the riot they declared that they would
not pull the trigger against the rebellions".
The "lack and total abandonment" of public education was such that by
the nineteenth century, very few had any schooling, "including the
whites themselves" (Chelmiki and Varnhagen 1841:192; see
also Lima 1844, Part 2: 111-12 cited in Meintel).
1816 Volcanic eruption in Fogo.
1816 Samuel Hodges of Stoughton, Massachusetts, and Manuel
Antonio Martins of Cape Verde establish a "joint business venture"
which involved smuggling American merchandise aboard African vessels
to ports up and down the West African coast. In 1818, in
response to the volume of American merchant and whaling shipping in
Cape Verde, the U.S. government establishes its first consulate
and appoints Hodges U.S. Consul.
1822 (January) Rent strike by sharecroppers and tenants against
Colonel Domingos Ramos, President of the District of Engenho in
the interior of Santiago. The protesters were demanding agrarian
reform which would transfer title to those people who actually worked
the land.
1823 The Crown is locked in a civil war in Portugal and does not
respond to calls for famine relief in Cape Verde. In the same year
three ships arrive from the United States carrying emergency supplies
donated by American civic and church organizations.
1825-1875 An average of 100 American whaling ships called
at Cape Verde each year.
1825 Famine in Santo Antao. Governor Chapuzet uses the profits
from the sale of the valuable urzela dye to finance emergency relief for
victims. Portuguese Crown responds by removing the Governor from
office.
Between 1826 and 1880, 338 American vessels are recorded
as having put in to Maio for salt (Carreira 1971:71 in
Meintel).
1830 Drought and famine throughout the country. 30,000
people or 42% of the total population die.
1830 Manuel Antonio Martins officially established the village of
Santa Maria. Here he bases the first of his salt production
businesses. At its peak the company exports 30,000 tons per
year. 1831-1834 Half of the population of Fogo die from
famine.
1830 Portugal outlaws the buying and selling of slaves.
1832 Charles Darwin, the English scientist, stops in Porto
Praia, Cape Verde, on the outward-bound voyage of the HMS
Beagle. On his return visit in 1836, Darwin records in his
diary, "We found lying there, as commonly is the case, some slaving
vessels."
1832-33 Famine in Cape Verde. The ship Charles out of
Boston arrived in Cape Verde carrying supplies donated by the people
of Boston, Portland, Newburyport, Charlestown and Ipswich.
Later that year the ship Citizen passing in Cape Verde also
discharged some of its provisions. 30,000 people died from the
famine. Santo Antao was the worst affected where 11,000 died
out of a population of 26,000.
1835 (March) 225 deportees from Sao Miguel in the Azores
stage a protest in Praia against Portuguese authorities. The
protesters sail away to Brava to escape authorities.
In the first eighty years of the nineteenth century 2,570
European degredados disembarked on the islands. These included
convicted murderers, church robbers, thieves, counterfeiters as well
as alcoholics, deserters, vagrants, prostitutes and political and
religious offenders. Antonio Carreira reports that 2,487 men and
83 women were landed in Cape Verde as degredados in this period.
Note the insignificant number of women. These persons were sentenced
to banishment in Cape Verde and were distributed throughout the
archipelago to avoid the development of any concentration on Santiago.
Eventually, whites helped these degredados from Portugal for reasons
of "esprit de couleur". Most eventually rehabilitated themselves and
became useful members of Cape Verdean society. Most never returned
to Portugal.
1835 (December 26) Slaves from around the island of Santiago
converge on Praia and begin attacking people with the announced
intention of "killing all white landowners". They called on all
"free poor" to join them and together "they would take possession of
the island" (Barcelos, parte IV p. 224). A report prepared
by the local Judge affirmed that "the slaves intended to obtain their
freedom and that for this they determined to kill their Lords and
afterwards embark for Guinea". (Barcelos IV, p. 122).
1837 Colonel Honorio Pereira Barreto (1813-1859), a
Cape Verdean, is appointed governor of Portuguese Guinea. Baretto
proved to be an efficient defender of Portuguese economic interests
against the encroachments of French and British traders. The
administration of this controversial figure is thought by many to have
actually prolonged the slave trade on the Coast.
1842 Records list 87 American merchant ships trading in the
Islands as compared to 61 Portuguese and 36 British ships.
Between 1851 and 1879, 338 American ships stopped in the
Islands to trade for salt.
1842 First commercial printing operation established in Cape
Verde.
1843-1859 The anti-slavery Africa Squadron of the U.S.
Navy patrols West African coastal waters from its base at Cape
Verde. The USS Constitution("Old Ironsides") served with
this squadron in Cape Verde. Captain Matthew Perry was the last
Commander of the Squadron. Sometime after Perry would command the
famous U.S. mission which opened up trade with Japan. Only 19
slavers were every actually charged in court as a result of the 16
year largely symbolic and ineffective operation. Most of those
convicted paid light fines and served very short sentences.
1843 Drought and famine in Santo Antao, Santiago, Sao
Nicolau and Brava.
1844 During 1844 and the first third of 1845 forty-two
American whaling ships, one English, and one French entered Cape
Verde to fish. Not one Portuguese flag vessel was recorded. From
1844 to 1891, 166 American whalers were noted (based in
Brava or Sao Nicolau), with one French, one English and six
other ships with Portuguese names.
1847 Volcanic eruption in Fogo.
1850 Drought and famine in Santo Antao, Sao Vicente, Sao
Nicolau, Boavista and Sal.
1852 Volcanic eruption in Fogo.
1853 Drought and famine in Sal and Boavista.
1855 Coal workers in Mindelo, Sao Vicente protest working and
wage conditions established by the English businessmen operating the
coaling station. Their demands for better working conditions were
rejected. At its peak, Mindelo was the 4th largest coaling station
in the world. 1859: 167 vessels call at Mindelo. In
1898: 1503 vessels.
1854-1855 A cholera epidemic in Fogo kills more than 800
people. Many of the dead bodies found unburied in local homes were fed
to the pigs by authorities. (Antonio Carreira)
1850s Petroleum is discovered in Pennsylvania, providing a
cheaper alternative to whale oil. At the same time the South Seas
whaling grounds were rapidly becoming depleted and the New Bedford
fleet was compelled to begin working the Arctic region. These
developments dramatically affected the economics of the whaling industry
and eventually led to its collapse by the beginning of the American
Civil War. As young white seamen made their way into the military or
took more desirable job opportunities onshore, over half of the crew
lists would be filled by Cape Verdeans. The net earnings per voyage
of foremast hands aboard the Yankee whalers in twenty three voyages
made by representative vessels during the years 1836-79 was
$30.47.
1850s Manuel Antonio Martins, an affluent Cape Verdean trader
and honorary vice consul of the United States, begins to develop a
salt extraction business in Pedra de Lume, Ilha do Sal. The
natural salina is in the floor of an extinct volcano.
1854-1856 25% of the population of Cape Verde perish in
famine. After hearing of the crisis members of the New York Corn
Exchange appoint a commission to collect funds and provisions.
$5,800. was immediately raised in New York City. Citizens of
Alexandria, Va. sent 500 bushels of wheat and the Corn Exchange
of Baltimore sent $1,045 to New York. On July 24,
1856 the New Hand arrived in Cape Verde with provisions.
1860 The population of the archipelago is recorded as approximately
90,000.
1809-1861 Historian Curtin estimates that approximately one
million slaves were illicitly imported to the Unites States between
1809 and 1861 (1961:13).
1861-1865 Civil War in the United States.
1861 Cape Verdeans were among the crew of the Great Stone
Fleet. Old New Bedford and Fairhaven whaling ships heavily laden
with stone sailed to Charleston,SC, in a desperate attempt to
blockade this important Confederate harbor. Ironically, the action
had the unintended effect of dramatically improving navigability in the
Charleston harbor!
1862-1867 The population of Santiago Island diminished by
18,000 and by 29,845 in the archipelago.
1865 (Royal Order 169, October 4, 1865) Banco
Nacional Ultramarino is chartered and begins making loans
collateralized on the security of a mortgages on rural and urban
properties. At the end of a very few years the Bank owned most of the
properties in Santiago. The social system in Cape Verde begins to
dramatically change with the shrinking of the class of wealthy
landowners and the growth of a "petty bourgeoisie" due in large
measure to the spread of education and later by the influence of
emigration to the United States. The returned literate emigrant
having acquired economic ease and an awareness of his own social esteem
by perseverance and hard work in foreign lands gradually displaced the
"county whites" of Cape Verde from their lofty position. Between
1920 and 1940 the Bank foreclosed on many properties and took
over direct administration or sold them at auction for a small fraction
of their value. Eventually all property values collapsed ushering in
the death of the "haute bourgeoisie".
In spite of the tumult of the credit crisis the land tenure system
remained. In 1970 there were 52 large property owners in
Santiago with 40 or more tenants holding 136 properties leased out
- for rent or sharecropping - to a total of 11,876 tenants and
13,076 share croppers.
The "invisible earnings" in the form of immigrant remittances from
the United States and elsewhere largely covered the balance of
payments deficit.
1867 Eugenio Tavares (1867-1930) is born in Brava.
Tavares became the leading composer of Cape Verdean mornas, a
champion of Kriolu language and culture and a romanticized figure in
Cape Verdean lore. Perhaps his most famous work is "Hora di
Bai", the bittersweet "Hour of Leaving" which was traditionally
sung at the docks in Brava as people boarded the America-bound
schooners.
1869 U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant arbitrates the long
dispute between Portugal and England and rules "ownership" of
Bolama island on the coast of Guine to Portugal.
1863 Famine throughout the archipelago.
1864 (July- November) Rains come to Cabo Verde. However,
lack of seed and tools prevent farmers from taking advantage of the
rains. Food aid arrives from Lisbon, Madeira and the colony of Sao
Tome. Malaria and influenza kill many. Over a five year period the
population of Fogo looses 7000 people. Large scale immigration
begins.
1864 (October 6) The bark Susan Jane arrives in New Bedford
carrying the first Cape Verdean women to immigrate to the USA,
ending a century-old all-male pattern of immigration. Some Cape
Verdean scholars look to this date as the beginning of the Cape
Verdean "community" in the United States.
1866 The San Jose Seminary is established in Ribeira Brava,
Sao Nicolau, to train priests, including Africans from Portuguese
Guine. The Seminary becomes the educational center of Cape Verde
for the next 75 years.
1865 United States abolishes slavery.
1869 Portugal abolishes slavery.
1870 The population of the archipelago is recorded as approximately
80,000.
1870 The British establish a transatlantic telegraph cable linking
Mindelo with their international telecommunications system.
1875-76 Poor rains and crop failures devastate Santiago and
Santo Antao.
1879 The administration of the colony of Portuguese Guinea is
officially separated from Cape Verde for the first time.
1883 Irregularity of rains bring on a famine. In spite of
government aid programs there is a repetition of the high mortality
rates of 1864. Fogo suffers more than the other islands.
1884-85 Major European powers convene the Berlin Congress to
establish the division of their colonial territories in Africa. The
borders drawn on the map of Africa at this Congress remain largely in
tact to this day.
1887 Brazil, the principal buyer of salt in Ilha do Sal,
imposes a high customs duty on imported salt as a protectionist measure
for its own emerging national salt industry. This singular act marks
the turning point in the economic history of Ilha do Sal.
1890 Crop failures throughout the country. Famine in Maio and
Brava.
1892 Antonio Coelho buys the Nellie May and becomes the first
Cape Verdean to own and operate a packet ship between Providence and
Cape Verde. Many of the old whaling vessels were bought by Cape
Verdeans and put into the Brava Packet Trade. "The round trip was
facilitated by a relatively mild wind and current pattern: northwest
from Fogo or Brava to the Gulf Stream, then north to New
England, east and southeast past the Azores to the northeast trades,
then south to home: 35 days to America, 45 days return, with
variation in track and time according to the season." (Francis M.
Rogers, Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups.
Cambridge, MA. 1980)
1894 First Cape Verdean literary journal, Almanach Loso-
Africano, published in Ribeira Grande, Sao Nicolau.
1895 Governor Serpa Pinto officially prohibits popular
celebrations on the feast of Santa Cruz in which local villages
dressed in costume and irreverently took on the roles of the Governor,
Judges, the King and Queen and other leading officials and practiced
the ceremonies and African drumming and chanting referred to as
"tabanka".
1885 Manuel Ricardo Martins, born in Maio in 1837,
established the first Cape Verdean Protestant congregation in the
United States. From very humble beginnings the Portuguese Mission
of Providence, RI expanded its services to the Fox Point
neighborhood to include an industrial school for women,
"Americanization" classes for new immigrants, Girl and Boy Scout
Troops and many other activities.
1898 Conigo Antonio DaCosta of the Seminary at Sao Nicolau
publishes a Cape Verdean Crioulo translation of the sections of the
Lusiadas, the epic poem of the heroic age of Portuguese exploration
by Luis Camoes.
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