Portuguese Cape Verde

Portuguese Cape Verde, the colony of the Portuguese Empire on the Atlantic islands off Senegal, lasted from the first settlement in 1462 until independence in 1975. António de Noli and Diogo Gomes discovered the southeastern islands in 1460 for Prince Henry the Navigator, and in 1462 the Portuguese founded Ribeira Grande on the south coast of Santiago, renamed Cidade Velha, the first European town in the tropics. It became a port of call between Africa, the Cape of Good Hope, Brazil and the Caribbean, and because of its proximity to the African coast it served as an essential platform for the Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans. Between 1492 and 1497 Manuel I exiled thousands of conversos to Cape Verde and São Tomé, and their descendants traded into African markets as lançados. Ribeira Grande's wealth attracted Francis Drake in 1585 and Jacques Cassard in 1712, and after Forte Real de São Filipe failed to save it the capital moved to Praia in 1770. Slavery was abolished in 1876. In the twentieth century the islands knew famine and emigration, and Amílcar and Luís Cabral's PAIGC carried the anti-colonial campaign, so that on 5 July 1975 the Portuguese prime minister handed power to Abílio Duarte at Praia and Cape Verde became independent.