History of Cape Verde - European Discovery and Settlement

European Discovery and Settlement

In 1456, Alvise Cadamosto discovered some of the islands. In the next decade, Diogo Gomes and António de Noli, captains in the service of prince Henry the Navigator, 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 Iberia the Reconquista movement was growing in its mission to recover Catholic lands from the Muslim Moors who had first arrived in the 8th century. It was however in 1492 that the Spanish Inquisition 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.

The islands' prosperity brought them unwanted attention in the form of a sacking at the hands of many pirates including England's Sir Francis Drake, who in 1582 and 1585 sacked Ribeira Grande. After a French attack in 1712, the city declined in importance relative to Praia, which became the capital in 1770.