https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_VerdeA rather isolated archipelago of 10 islands in the Mid-Atlantic about 570 kilometers to the West of Senegal. Despite being considered part of Africa, its historical trajectory is more comparable to a Caribbean island state than anything on the African mainline. All 10 islands were uninhabited before the arrival of the Portuguese in the 1450s. Quickly they created settlements for this territory they claimed. In the 16th Century it grew sugar and its settlement part of the settlement grew rich off it being both a centre for slave-driven plantation agriculture and for being a middle point in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Due to the nature of the Atlantic winds, it was a good stopping off points for ships going from Europe to the Americas. In the 19th Century it went into 'decline' with the decline of the trade, and was neglected and mostly ignored by its colonial master who cared little for its black and mixed-raced populations, unlike Madeira and the Azores who, despite an early history dealing with slavery, had populations that were strongly of European descent. Independence, when it came in 1975, was mostly not sought for as the main group fighting for independence was actually based in Guinea-Bissau and spoke of an independent union between the two countries. Considering the history of Guinea-Bissau since 1975, it is almost certainly the best for Cape Verde that this union did not come about. Although it is still a country suffering under poor soil and land usage, poverty, and emigration (more Cape Verdeans live outside the islands than on them) it is one of the best off countries in Africa with no extreme poverty, stable democracy, relative lack of corruption and more western guaranteed liberties and protections. However it is still small (population just 500,000) and isolated from the rest of the continent. The connection with Portugal is still very important. Recently Cape Verde have announced, a la Cote D'ivoire, that they want only the officially recognized name to be Capo Verde, regardless of the language. So far though wikipedia has kept with the standard English nomenclature (thankfully we don't refer to it as 'Green Cape') and that is what I have decided to keep with.
Below is a map of the world as projected under the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) a treaty signed by Spain and Portugal at the agreement of Pope Alexander VI (aka Rodrigo Borgia) following Columbus' voyages. The purpose of the treaty is little more than the partition of the whole world between Spain and Portugal, especially of the newly discovered regions of which at the time very little was known, and of maintaining who had the best claim to the markets of Asia. The reason this is shown under Cape Verde is that Cape Verde was used as the demarcation point for the treaty. All land 370 leagues to the west of Cape Verde was to be Portugal's, all to the west of that Spain's (the problems this would bring about due to the circular nature of the Earth was dealt with in later treaties). The main effect of this treaty was to give legitimacy to Portugal's claim to what would become Brazil, a fact which many historians have suspected was not unintentional despite Brazil supposedly remained undiscovered at that time.
