# The Chronicle of Cape Verde: From uninhabited mid-Atlantic islands and the first European town in the tropics, through the Atlantic slave trade, recurring famine and a distinctive Creole culture, to Amílcar Cabral's liberation struggle, independence in 1975, and one of Africa's most stable democracies. History of Cape Verde: From uninhabited mid-Atlantic islands and the first European town in the tropics, through the Atlantic slave trade, recurring… Canonical: https://terralore.co/country/CPV/chronicle Updated: 2026-06-13 Founding: Independence from Portugal — 5 July 1975. Cape Verde became an independent republic on 5 July 1975, ending more than five centuries of Portuguese rule. Independence followed the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974, which toppled Portugal's Estado Novo dictatorship and opened the way to decolonisation across its African empire. The African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), founded in 1956 by Amílcar Cabral, had waged its armed struggle chiefly on the Guinea-Bissau mainland, but it carried both territories to statehood; Aristides Pereira, the party's secretary-general, became Cape Verde's first president. The United States recognised the new Republic of Cape Verde the same day, when President Gerald Ford sent a letter to President Pereira, and formal diplomatic relations followed within weeks. For a time the new state shared the PAIGC and a project of union with Guinea-Bissau, but that bond would not survive the decade. Cape Verde (Cabo Verde) is a ten-island volcanic archipelago some 600 kilometres off the West African coast, lying uninhabited until Portuguese navigators reached it around 1456 and began settling it in 1462. On Santiago they founded Ribeira Grande — today Cidade Velha — the first permanent European city in the tropics and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which grew rich as an entrepôt of the transatlantic slave trade. From this mingling of Portuguese settlers and enslaved Africans emerged a distinctive Creole (Kriolu) people, language and music, above all the melancholy morna sung by Cesária Évora. Recurring droughts brought catastrophic famines that killed well over a hundred thousand people and drove waves of emigration, so that today the Cape Verdean diaspora outnumbers the resident population. After Amílcar Cabral's PAIGC waged a shared liberation struggle with Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde won independence from Portugal on 5 July 1975, broke off the planned union with Bissau after a 1980 coup, embraced multiparty democracy in 1990–91, and has since become a stable, services-based democracy widely cited as a development success. This file carries the chronicle's sourced event record — every event with its year, summary and source keys (resolved under References below). The full reading narrative lives on the canonical page. ## Uninhabited islands and the first town in the tropics — c. 1456 – 1550 Portuguese navigators reached the empty archipelago around 1456 and in 1462 founded Ribeira Grande on Santiago — the first permanent European city in the tropics. - c. 1456: **Portuguese reach the uninhabited islands** — Sailing for Prince Henry the Navigator, the Venetian captain Alvise Cadamosto and others made landfall on the empty Cape Verde archipelago; further islands were charted over the next decade by Diogo Gomes and António de Noli. [britannica-cv, history-cv-wiki, worldhistory-cv] - 1462: **Ribeira Grande founded on Santiago** — Portuguese settlers established Ribeira Grande (today Cidade Velha) on Santiago — the first permanent European city in the tropics — drawing Portuguese, Genoese and Flemish settlers, convicts and Sephardic Jews. [unesco-cidadevelha, cidadevelha-wiki, history-cv-wiki] - 1466: **Trading privileges over the Guinea coast** — The Portuguese crown granted Santiago's settlers the right to trade in the "Rivers of Guinea" on the West African mainland, anchoring the colony's economy to commerce with the coast. [history-cv-wiki, worldhistory-cv] - 1493–1495: **The Nossa Senhora do Rosário church** — Construction of the church of Nossa Senhora do Rosário at Ribeira Grande, among the oldest surviving colonial churches anywhere, reflected the town's new role as a bishopric and religious centre of the islands. [cidadevelha-wiki, unesco-cidadevelha] ## Entrepôt of the slave trade — and its decline — c. 1500 – 1770 Ribeira Grande grew rich as a sorting-house of the transatlantic slave trade before corsair raids, the trade's shift and French destruction in 1712 brought ruin and a move of the capital to Praia. - 16th century: **A sorting-house of the slave trade** — Ribeira Grande became a major entrepôt where enslaved Africans from the Upper Guinea coast were held, baptised, taxed and re-exported to the Americas, with thousands passing through annually by mid-century. [britannica-cv, worldhistory-cv, history-cv-wiki, npr-cv-slavery] - 1585: **Drake sacks Ribeira Grande** — The English privateer Sir Francis Drake attacked and sacked the wealthy port of Ribeira Grande, one of several corsair raids that beset the islands during the era of the Iberian Union. [history-cv-wiki, cidadevelha-wiki] - 1712: **Cassard's French raid destroys the city** — The French corsair Jacques Cassard stormed and looted Ribeira Grande, stripping its churches and houses; the coastal town, already declining, never recovered from the assault. [cassard-wiki, cidadevelha-wiki, history-cv-wiki] - 1770: **Capital moves to Praia** — As the slave trade waned and Ribeira Grande lay in ruins, administration shifted to the more defensible plateau of Praia, which became the capital in 1770 and remains so today. [history-cv-wiki, cidadevelha-wiki] Figures: - Jacques Cassard (1679–1740) — French corsair. Naval captain and privateer whose 1712 expedition against Portuguese and other colonies reached Cape Verde, where his men sacked and looted Ribeira Grande, hastening the decline of the islands' first capital. ## Creole culture, the coaling port, and the years of hunger — 1770 – 1956 A distinctive Creole language and the morna gave the islands a soul, even as Mindelo became an Atlantic coaling and cable station and recurring droughts brought famines that killed tens of thousands. - from c. 1838: **Mindelo becomes an Atlantic coaling station** — The deep harbour of Porto Grande at Mindelo on São Vicente was developed as a coaling station for transatlantic steamships and later a submarine-cable relay, briefly making the port cosmopolitan and prosperous. [history-cv-wiki, britannica-cv] - 1869: **Slavery abolished** — Portugal abolished slavery in its territories in 1869, ending the legal trade that had built the islands' early wealth, though forced and contract labour systems persisted afterward. [history-cv-wiki, britannica-cv] - 18th–19th centuries: **Famines kill at least 100,000** — Recurrent droughts produced a series of catastrophic famines; during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries at least 100,000 people died of starvation and disease, amid an inadequate colonial response. [famine-cv-wiki, history-cv-wiki] - 1941–43 and 1947–48: **The twentieth-century famines** — Two further droughts brought famines that together killed tens of thousands; starving refugees were interned in camps outside Praia, and survivors emigrated in growing numbers, deepening the diaspora. [famine-cv-wiki, history-cv-wiki, britannica-cv] - 1867–1930: **The morna and Creole letters** — The poet Eugénio Tavares of Brava elevated the morna to a literary art in Cape Verdean Creole; the song-form of love, parting and sodade would later be carried worldwide by Cesária Évora. [tavares-wiki, morna-aljazeera, morna-unesco] Figures: - Eugénio Tavares (1867–1930) — Poet and morna composer. Native of the island of Brava who became one of Cape Verde's foremost poets, writing celebrated mornas in Creole on themes of love, the sea and emigration; his collection Mornas: Cantigas Crioulas appeared posthumously in 1932. ## Cabral, the PAIGC, and independence — 1956 – 1975 Amílcar Cabral's PAIGC bound Cape Verde to Guinea-Bissau's liberation war; Cabral was assassinated in 1973, and the archipelago won independence on 5 July 1975. - 1956: **Cabral founds the PAIGC** — Amílcar Cabral and a small group founded the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, conceiving the two Portuguese territories as one nation to be liberated together. [cabral-blackpast, cabral-wiki, britannica-cv] - 1963: **Armed struggle begins on the mainland** — Because the islands were unsuited to guerrilla war, the PAIGC waged its armed campaign on the Guinea-Bissau mainland from 1963, while Cape Verdean cadres filled the party's leadership. [cabral-blackpast, cabral-wiki, history-cv-wiki] - 20 January 1973: **Cabral assassinated in Conakry** — Amílcar Cabral was shot dead at a PAIGC roadblock in Conakry by a party member and others, in a plot widely linked to Portuguese agents, two years before the islands gained independence. [cabral-blackpast, cabral-wiki] - 25 April 1974: **The Carnation Revolution** — A military coup in Lisbon overthrew Portugal's Estado Novo dictatorship, worn down by its colonial wars, opening the way to decolonisation and negotiations on Cape Verde's independence. [history-cv-wiki, britannica-cv, statedept-cv] - 5 July 1975: **Independence of Cape Verde** — The Republic of Cape Verde declared independence from Portugal on 5 July 1975 under the PAIGC, with Aristides Pereira as first president; the United States recognised the new state the same day. [statedept-cv, history-cv-wiki, britannica-cv] Figures: - Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973) — Founder of the PAIGC and leader of the liberation struggle. Cape Verdean–Guinean agronomist and revolutionary theorist who founded the PAIGC in 1956 and led the joint liberation movement of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. Internationally admired as a thinker on national liberation, he was assassinated in Conakry on 20 January 1973, before either territory became independent. - Aristides Pereira (1923–2011) — First President of Cape Verde (1975–1991). PAIGC secretary-general who led Cape Verde to independence in 1975 and served as its first president for sixteen years, presiding over a one-party state before peacefully ceding power after the 1991 multiparty elections. ## The broken union and the turn to democracy — 1975 – 1991 A 1980 coup in Bissau ended the planned union with Guinea-Bissau, and a decade later Cape Verde peacefully abandoned one-party rule for multiparty democracy. - 14 November 1980: **Bissau coup ends the union** — A coup in Guinea-Bissau led by João Bernardo "Nino" Vieira overthrew President Luís Cabral and shattered the planned union with Cape Verde, whose PAIGC branch broke away to form the separate PAICV. [history-cv-wiki, 1980coup-wiki, britannica-cv] - 1981: **The PAICV and a one-party state** — Cape Verde's branch of the PAIGC was reconstituted as the African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV), which governed the islands as a pragmatic one-party state through the 1980s. [history-cv-wiki, britannica-cv] - April–September 1990: **End of one-party rule** — Amid rising pressure for pluralism, the opposition Movement for Democracy (MpD) formed in April 1990 and the National Assembly abolished single-party rule that September, clearing the way for free elections. [statedept-cv-bgn, history-cv-wiki] - January–February 1991: **First multiparty elections** — In Cape Verde's first free elections the MpD won a parliamentary majority, and António Mascarenhas Monteiro defeated President Aristides Pereira with about 73 per cent of the vote; the PAICV ceded power peacefully. [1991election-wiki, statedept-cv-bgn, history-cv-wiki] ## A stable democracy and a global people — 1991 – present Since 1991 Cape Verde has alternated power peacefully between rival parties, graduated from least-developed status, and remained bound to a diaspora larger than its resident population. - 2001: **Peaceful alternation of power** — The PAICV returned to government in the 2001 elections and Pedro Pires won the presidency, confirming a pattern of peaceful, competitive transfers of power between rival parties. [statedept-cv-bgn, history-cv-wiki] - 2004: **Cesária Évora and morna go global** — Cesária Évora, the "barefoot diva", won a Grammy for the album Voz d'Amor, the high point of a career that carried Cape Verdean morna and its Creole longing to audiences worldwide. [evora-wiki, morna-aljazeera] - 2007: **Graduation from least-developed status** — Buoyed by tourism, remittances and stable governance, Cape Verde graduated from the UN list of least-developed countries — a rare achievement for an African state — confirming its development progress. [history-cv-wiki, worldbank-cv] - 2009: **Cidade Velha named a World Heritage Site** — UNESCO inscribed Cidade Velha, the Historic Centre of Ribeira Grande — the first European city in the tropics — as Cape Verde's only World Heritage Site, recognising its role in the Atlantic slave trade and colonial expansion. [unesco-cidadevelha, cidadevelha-wiki] - 2019: **Morna inscribed as intangible heritage** — UNESCO added morna, the Cape Verdean musical practice of love, parting and sodade, to its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, honouring the islands' best-known cultural expression. [morna-unesco, morna-aljazeera] Figures: - Cesária Évora (1941–2011) — Singer, the "barefoot diva". Cape Verde's most celebrated artist, who from the 1990s brought the morna to the world stage, singing in Creole and performing barefoot in solidarity with the islands' poor; she won a Grammy in 2004 and became a global symbol of Cape Verdean identity and sodade. Machine-readable claims — every event above as an addressable claim ID (TL:CPV:event::) with its sources and a ready citation string: https://terralore.co/country/CPV/chronicle.claims.json ## References - [britannica-cv] History of Cabo Verde — Encyclopaedia Britannica · https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Cabo-Verde - [history-cv-wiki] History of Cape Verde — Wikipedia · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Cape_Verde - [worldhistory-cv] The Portuguese Colonization of Cape Verde — World History Encyclopedia · https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1762/the-portuguese-colonization-of-cape-verde/ - [unesco-cidadevelha] Cidade Velha, Historic Centre of Ribeira Grande — UNESCO World Heritage Centre · https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1310/ - [cidadevelha-wiki] Cidade Velha — Wikipedia · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Velha - [cassard-wiki] Cassard expedition (1712) — Wikipedia · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassard_expedition - [npr-cv-slavery] The small island nation of Cabo Verde was once a hub for slave trading — NPR · https://www.npr.org/2023/09/26/1201683059/the-small-island-nation-of-cabo-verde-was-once-a-hub-for-slave-trading - [famine-cv-wiki] Famine in Cape Verde — Wikipedia · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_Cape_Verde - [tavares-wiki] Eugénio Tavares — Wikipedia · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A9nio_Tavares - [morna-aljazeera] The story of morna: Cape Verde's music of displacement and return — Al Jazeera · https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/5/23/morna-the-music-of-displacement-and-return - [morna-unesco] Morna, musical practice of Cabo Verde — UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage · https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/morna-musical-practice-of-cabo-verde-01469 - [evora-wiki] Cesária Évora — Wikipedia · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ces%C3%A1ria_%C3%89vora - [cabral-blackpast] Amílcar Lopes Cabral (1924–1973) — BlackPast.org · https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/cabral-amilcar-lopes-1924-1973/ - [cabral-wiki] Amílcar Cabral — Wikipedia · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am%C3%ADlcar_Cabral - [statedept-cv] A Guide to the History of Recognition: Cabo Verde — U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian · https://history.state.gov/countries/cape-verde - [statedept-cv-bgn] Background Note: Cape Verde — U.S. Department of State · https://2009-2017.state.gov/outofdate/bgn/capeverde/40550.htm - [pereira-wiki] Aristides Pereira — Wikipedia · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristides_Pereira - [1980coup-wiki] 1980 Guinea-Bissau coup d'état — Wikipedia · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Guinea-Bissau_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat - [1991election-wiki] 1991 Cape Verdean presidential election — Wikipedia · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Cape_Verdean_presidential_election - [diaspora-wiki] Cape Verdean diaspora — Wikipedia · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Verdean_diaspora - [worldbank-cv] Cabo Verde — Country Overview — World Bank Group · https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/caboverde/overview - [wikipedia-cape-verde] Cape Verde — Wikipedia · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Verde Citation template: Terralore, "The Chronicle of Cape Verde: From uninhabited mid-Atlantic islands and the first European town in the tropics, through the Atlantic slave trade, recurring famine and a distinctive Creole culture, to Amílcar Cabral's liberation struggle, independence in 1975, and one of Africa's most stable democracies.", terralore.co/country/CPV/chronicle, retrieved .