The recorded human history of Cabo Verde begins with the Portuguese discovery of the island in 1458. Possible early references to Cape Verde date back at least 2,000 years.
Prehistory
The first islands formed, around 40–50 million years ago, were present-day Sal and its eastern neighbors. The western islands were formed later, including São Nicolau (as early as 11.8 million years ago), São Vicente (nine million years ago), present-day Santiago and Fogo (four million years ago), and Brava (two to three million years ago). Millions of years after the seamounts rose above the Atlantic, the first lizards, insects and plants came to the archipelago, possibly on ocean currents from the African mainland when the ocean's salinity was lower.
The archipelago experienced several large volcanic eruptions, including Praia Grande 4.5 million years ago, São Vicente (and, possibly, present-day Porto Grande) 300,000 years ago, and Topo da Coroa 200,000 years ago. 73,000 years old, in the east of present-day Fogo, Fogo's volcano flanks collapsed which caused a megatsunami of between 170-240m high, inundating coastal Santiago Island, Maio, and possibly Brava and part of the Barlavento Islands. The volcano on Fogo island remains active to this day. Its last eruption was in 2014.
During the last Ice Age, the sea level dropped to about below its current level. Cape Verde's islands became slightly more broad, and there was a large island identified as Northwest Island. Santo Antão was one kilometer northwest of the island; Boa Vista and Maio were one island, and another island known as Nola (Ilha da Nola, northwest of Santo Antão) was about meters above sea level. Before the end of the Ice Age, the Eastern Island (Ilha Occidental) split into three islands; one became submerged and is now the João Valente Reef, the Canal de São Vicente widened to provide separation from Santo Antão, Nola Island was submerged and again became a seamount, and eastern Northwest Island broke up into São Vicente, the smaller Santa Luzia, and the two islets of Branco and Raso.
Possible classical references Cape Verde may have been referenced in De choreographia by Pomponius Mela and Historia naturalis by Pliny the Elder. Mela and Pliny called the islands "Gorgades", referring to the home of the mythical Gorgons killed by Perseus. In typical ancient euhemerism, they suggested the islands as the place where the Carthaginian Hanno the Navigator slew two female "Gorillai".
Pliny, citing the Greek writer Xenophon of Lampsacus, placed the Gorgades at two days' travel from "Hesperu Ceras" (the westernmost part of the African continent, today called Cap-Vert). As quoted by Gaius Julius Solinus, he also said that the voyage from the Gorgades to the Hesperides took around 40 days. The Isles of the Blessed, written about by Marinus of Tyre and referenced by Ptolemy in his Geographia, may have been the Cape Verde islands.Analysis of Ptolemy's Geographia
Portuguese discovery and colonisation
15th and 16th centuries In 1456, Alvise Cadamosto, Antoniotto Usodimare (Venetian and Genoese captains, respectively, in the service of Prince Henry the Navigator) and an unnamed Portuguese captain discovered some of the islands. During 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 they first landed in Cape Verde, the islands were barren of people but not of vegetation.
Prince Fernando, King Afonso V of Portugal's brother, was granted the archipelago as a fiefdom. The Portuguese established Ribeira Grande (present-day Cidade Velha) in 1462 on the island of São Tiago. This was the first permanent European settlement in the tropics. The first settlers included Portuguese, Genoese, and Flemish adventurers; reprieved convicts; and Sephardic Jews fleeing persecution. In 1466, with the settlement failing to attract enough settlers, Afonso gave the population trading rights in all of West Africa except Arguim. He rescinded this a few years later, when the monarchy began selling lucrative trade monopolies instead, but enterprising Cape Verdeans and Luso-Africans would still play a prominent role in the first centuries of European trade in the region, often in defiance of the Portuguese crown.
In Spain, the Reconquista was growing in its mission to conquer Iberia and expel the Muslims and Jews. In 1492, the Spanish Inquisition also emerged in its fullest expression of anti-Semitism. It spread to neighboring Portugal (as the Portuguese Inquisition), where King João II and Manuel I exiled thousands of Jews to São Tomé, Príncipe, and Cape Verde in 1496.
The Portuguese soon brought slaves from the West African coast. Positioned on trade routes between Africa, Europe, and the New World, the archipelago prospered from the transatlantic slave trade during the 16th century. Sao Tiago and Fogo hosted slave plantations growing sugar and cotton for shipment to Portugal, and producing panos (cotton cloth) for export to West Africa. Massive amounts of salt were produced on Maio, Boa Vista, and Sal, sold to cod fishermen. Horses were reared on Santiago and shipped to the African coast as well.
Settlements began to appear on other islands. São Filipe was founded in 1500; Ponta do Sol and Ribeira Grande were founded in the mid-16th century (when its first settlers also arrived in Madeira and Ribeira Brava on São Nicolau). Povoação Velha on Boa Vista, Furna, Nova Sintra on Brava, and Palmeira on Sal were later founded.
Cabo Verdean society at this period was deeply segregated and hierarchical. At the top were the peninsula-born Portuguese whites, mostly government officials, soldiers, and the upper clergy. The next group were the brancos da terra, the local whites, with the earliest settlers and their descendants, the morgados, chief among them. Free pardos (mulattos) and pretos (blacks) came next, and the escravos (slaves) were at the bottom.
The islands' prosperity encouraged sacking by pirates, particularly during the period of the Iberian Union 1580–1640, when Spain's enemies, the British, French, and Dutch, raided Portuguese colonies. Sir Francis Drake sacked Ribeira Grande in 1582, captured the island in 1585 and raided Cidade Velha, Praia and São Domingos.
17th and 18th centuries
During the 17th century, Algerian corsairs established a base on the Cape Verde islands. They raided Madeira in 1617, stealing the church bells and taking 1,200 people captive.
Given the scarcity of capital for the region's development, the Portuguese Finance and Overseas Councils authorized the 1664 foundation of the Guinea Coast Company. The company aimed at the slave trade, ending individual tenancy and encouraging slave companies. The Company of Cacheu and Rivers and Commerce of Guinea, which operated between 1676 and 1682, was succeeded by the Company of Cacheu and Cape Verde in 1690.
Pico do Fogo erupted in 1680, which resulted in the movement of the population to Brava and other regions (including Brazil). For a few years, the volcano was a natural lighthouse for sailors. The latter decades of the 17th century also saw the first emigration flows from the islands to North America. Whales abounded in the waters around Cape Verde, and whaling ships from Massachusetts and Rhode Island recruited local crewmen who knew the currents and weather from the islands of Brava and Fogo. These outflows would continue for centuries.
As a result of the 1712 French Cassard expedition in which Ribeira Grande was destroyed, the capital was partially moved to Praia. With the Portuguese increasingly sidelined in Atlantic trade, Cape Verde became a poor backwater. By 1740, the island was a supply point for American slave ships and whalers. This began a stream of male immigration to the American colonies. Praia, with its natural harbor, became the permanent capital in 1770 as the plantation economy diminished in importance relative to trade and naval supply.
In 1747, the islands were hit with the first of several droughts and famines which have plagued them ever since at average five-year intervals. The situation was made worse by deforestation and overgrazing, which destroyed the ground vegetation that provided moisture. Three major droughts during the 18th and 19th centuries resulted in well over 100,000 people starving to death. The Portuguese government sent little relief during the droughts.
In 1758 the Grão Pará and Maranhão Company was granted a 20-year monopoly on all trade in Cape Verde and the West African coast. Its agents ruthlessly exploited the islands' inhabitants, commandeering panos, liquor, food, and other supplies regardless of droughts and famines. Many were recruited for service in Guinea. Construction of the Fortaleza de São José da Amura in Bissau cost more than 2,600 lives, most of them Cabo Verdean laborers.Walter Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545–1800 (Oxford, 1970), 246–47 Textiles were smuggled and sold on the black market. 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, although it also erupted in 1785 and 1799. Another famine, affecting Brava and Fogo, began in 1774; 20,000 people starved. Fogo's population dropped from 5,700 to 4,200 around 1777. The company's mismanagement made the situation worse, as they sold desperately needed food and raised the prices of what little was available. In 1778 the monopoly ended, and the Portuguese created the province of Cabo Verde e Guine.
Although Portugal was neutral in the American Revolutionary War, the British and French navies fought the Battle of Porto Praya off Praia on 16 April 1781.
19th century
Mindelo (originally Nossa Senhora da Luz) was founded in 1795, Pedra de Lume on Sal in 1799, and Santa Maria in early 1830 on the same island. Praia (the colonial capital) was modernized in 1822, expanding northward.
In the aftermath of the Liberal Revolution of 1820, slave trader Manuel António Martins used the unrest to form a junta with other leading civilians, driving the governor out and ruling the islands until 1823. Martins was officially appointed prefect of the province in 1833. Soon after he took office, he disbanded the branco-dominated militias. When, in 1835, some conservative officers in the local garrison mutinied, the disaffected brancos accused Martins of abetting the plot and arrested him. A new governor, Joaquim Pereira Marinho, arrived in September to restore order. He attempted to start local fishing companies, where previously Cape Verdean had been banned from owning boats for fear of slaves escaping, but his successor cancelled the project.
The British established a station in Mindelo to refuel ships with coal, water, and other supplies beginning in 1839, and the city flourished. Two attempts to move the colonial capital from Praia were made: a plan to move to Picos in 1831 when another famine struck Cape Verde, and Mindelo was proposed in 1838. Many people did not want to move the colonial capital, and it remained in Praia. Two submarine telegraph cables were linked in 1874 to Pernambuco, Brazil and to Cameroon via Bathurst in the Gambia in 1885.
The system of morgados was abolished in 1863, and slavery in 1864, but much of the population remained dependent on their former masters, renting or sharecropping land. The decline of the slave trade dealt a blow to Cape Verde's economy. The shipping traffic at Mindelo, however, served as an important engine of economic activity. Ships plying the South Atlantic to and from Africa and Asia stopped at Mindelo for coal, salt, meat, water, and wine imported from Madeira and the Azores. In 1890 a total of 156 ships unloaded 657,633,588 metric tons of coal there, and the port was visited by 2,264 ships carrying 344,907 persons.
20th century