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Cabo Verde / Cape Verde - History

The Cabo Verde archipelago is about 300 miles off the coast of West Africa. The historiography of Cape Verde is controversial. Mainstream Cape Verdean scholars side with the idea of a European discovery, but prominent scholars, such as António Carreira and António Correio e Silva, do not rule out the possibility of a small African settlement in the interior of Santiago prior to the Portuguese arrival. The majority of scholars maintain the Portuguese (or at least Europeans) discovered an uninhabited Cape Verde.

But the Arabs knew about Cape Verde before the Portuguese stumbled upon it. Richard Lobban [“Were the Portuguese the First To Visit Cape Verde (1),” Cimboa 5, no. 6 (1998)] underscored the possibility that visitors prior to the European arrival include Hanno the Phoenician in the fifth century BC, Lebou fishermen from Senegal, Malian sailors under Mansa Ulli, and medieval Arab mariners coming down the coast and seeing smoke rising from Fogo.

Tradition in Santiago claimed that Wolof were the original inhabitants before the Portuguese arrived. In 1625, Donelha described a dispute concerning the royal succession among the Wolof king and vassals in which the king ordered the killing of his rival, the “Jonais” generation, including men, women, and children, but some were able to escape and embarked on a canoe with family, slaves, and ivory, and ended up in the Cape Verde Islands either before 1460 or around the discovery of Cape Verde by the Portuguese.

In 1462, Portuguese settlers arrived at Santiago and founded Ribeira Grande (now Cidade Velha), the first permanent European settlement city in the tropics. The Portuguese colonized the “uninhabited” archipelago in 1460 and soon began trading with the mainland for slaves and black African slaves became the majority, resulting in the first racialized Atlantic slave society.

Cape Verde was the first slave society in which Europeans were on top of the social ladder and black Africans, as slaves, were at the bottom. From Santiago Island, the Portuguese initiated an increasingly intense scale of trade, in which slaves became the primary commodity.In the 16th century, the archipelago prospered from the transatlantic slave trade. Pirates occasionally attacked the Portuguese settlements. Sir Francis Drake sacked Ribeira Grande in 1585. After a French attack in 1712, the city declined in importance relative to Praia, which became the capital in 1770.

With the decline in the slave trade, Cape Verdes early prosperity slowly vanished. However, the islands position astride mid-Atlantic shipping lanes made Cape Verde an ideal location for re-supplying ships. Because of its excellent harbor, Mindelo (on the island of Sao Vicente) became an important commercial center during the 19th century.

Portugal changed Cape Verdes status from a colony to an “overseas province” in 1951 in an attempt to blunt growing nationalism. At that time, Cape Verde was considered among the most “assimilated” of Portugal’s holdings. Nevertheless, many Cape Verdeans resented Portugal’s neglect of the islands’ economic development and found common cause with the Partido Africano da Independencia da Guine e Cabo Verde (PAIGC or the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde), formed by Amilcar Cabral (whose father was Cape Verdean) in Guinea-Bissau in 1956.

Cabral's PAIGC demanded improvement in economic, social, and political conditions in Cape Verde and Portuguese Guinea and formed the basis of the two nations independence movement. In 1959, the PAIGC decided to proclaim an all-out independence struggle. Moving its headquarters to Conakry, Guinea in 1960, the PAIGC began an armed rebellion against Portugal in March 1961. The PAIGC began its struggle in earnest in 1963. Acts of sabotage eventually grew into a war in Portuguese Guinea that pitted 10,000 Soviet bloc-supported PAIGC soldiers against 35,000 Portuguese and African troops.

The islands of Cape Verde, kept under relatively tight control by the Portuguese police and military, were used as a place of confinement for political prisoners from the other PortugueseAfrican possessions and from Portugal. Although there was no actual fighting on the islands, Cape Verdeans crossed over to Guinea-Bissau to aid in the struggle. By 1972, the PAIGC controlled much of Portuguese Guinea despite the presence of the Portuguese troops, but the organization did not attempt to disrupt Portuguese control in Cape Verde.

In January 1973, Amilcar Cabral was assassinated. Portuguese Guinea declared independence in 1973 and was granted de jure independence in 1974. Following the April 1974 revolution in Portugal, the PAIGC became an active political movement in Cape Verde. In September 1974 (the year a military coup in Portugal ushered democracy into that country and effectively ended the colonial era), Portuguese Guinea gained its independence from Portugal and officially became Guinea-Bissau. In December 1974, the PAIGC and Portugal signed an agreement providing for a transitional government composed of Portuguese and Cape Verdeans.

On June 30, 1975, Cape Verdeans elected a National Assembly, which received the instruments of independence from Portugal on July 5, 1975. Cape Verde joined with Guinea-Bissau under the joint rule of the PAIGC. Efforts to keep Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau united under PAIGC ended in 1980, when Guinea-Bissau president Luis Cabral (Amilcar Cabral’s brother) was overthrown. In response, the party in Cape Verde changed its name to Partido Africano da Independência de Cabo Verde (the African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV)). Relations between the two countries improved after the 1982 release of Luis Cabral, and diplomatic ties were resumed. The PAICV continued to govern Cape Verde as a one-party state until the country held its first democratic elections in 1990. The country has had seven rounds of elections since independence in 1975, all considered free and fair.

Immediately following the November 1980 coup in Guinea-Bissau, relations between Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau became strained. Cape Verde abandoned its hope for unity with Guinea-Bissau and formed the African Party for Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV). The PAICV and its predecessor established a one-party system and ruled Cape Verde from independence until 1990.