Ap Bio

Cape Verde Islands, an archipelago in mid-Atlantic Ocean, has had its reductions and growths in a series of years. This paper will give enlightenment of Cape Verde’s History, which will include its culture and social make-up of the country. In 1456, Alvise Cadamosto, who was a Venetian sea captain and explorer, discovered some of the islands of the archipelago. In the next decade, Diogo Gomes and Antonio Noli, captains in the service of Prince Henry the Navigator, discovered the remaining islands. When these mariners first arrived in Cape Verde, the islands were unproductive of people but not of vegetation. Seeing the islands today, you find it hard to visualize that they were once adequately verde (green) to attract the Portuguese to return six years later to the island of São Tiago to found Ribeira Grande, which is now called Cidade Velha. This was the first permanent European settlement city in the tropics.
     
      The Portuguese soon brought slaves from the West African coast to perform labor under harsh punishments.   The archipelago prospered from the transatlantic slave trade, which was positioned on the great trade routes between Africa, Europe, and the New World in the 16th century. Although the Cape Verdeans were treated badly by their colonial masters, they fared slightly better than Africans in other Portuguese colonies because of their lighter skin. A small minority received an education and Cape Verde was the first African-Portuguese colony to have a school for higher education. Due to the attention of prosperity, from the slave trade, there were many numerous accounts of sacking from pirates. After a French attack in 1712, Ribeira Grande declined in importance relative to Praia, which became the capital of Cape Verde in 1770.

    Several years after the French attack, in 1747 the islands were hit with the first of the many droughts that have afflicted them ever since. The situation was made worse by deforestation and overgrazing, which...