¹ Armitage, David, “Introduction,” The British Atlantic World, eds Annitage, David and Braddick, Michael J. (Basingstoke, 2002), 11.Google Scholar

² Blackburn, Robin, The Making of New World Slavery: from the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (London, 1997).Google Scholar

³ The best overall synthesis remains Thornton's, JohnAfrica and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (2d. ed.: Cambridge, 1998).CrossRefGoogle ScholarMiller's, Joseph C.Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730-1830 (Madison, 1988)Google Scholar is a classic work locating African history within a wider Atlantic perspective, and there are also some recent studies which have begun the task of trying to integrate African experiences into Atlantic perspectives: see in particular Shaw, Rosalind, Memories of the Slave Trade: Ritual and the Historical Imagination in Sierra Leone (Chicago, 2002)Google Scholar; Havik, Philip J., Silences and Soundbytes: the Gendered Dynamics of Trade and Brokerage in the Precolonial Guinea-Bissau Region (Münster, 2004)Google Scholar; and Argenti, Nicolas, The Intestines of the State: Youth, Violence and Befoted Histories in the Cameroon Grass-fields (Chicago, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Moreover these engagements with the Atlantic are in themselves highly controversial, with the work of Argenti and Shaw, borrowing heavily from symbolist schools of anthropology.

⁴ A brief selection of these earlier works might include Birmingham, David, Trade and Conflict in Angola: the Mbundu and their Neighbours under the Influence of the Portuguese, 1483-1790 (Oxford, 1966)Google Scholar; Daaku, K.Y., Trade and Politics on the Gold Coast, 1600-1720: a Study of African Reaction to European Trade (Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar; Kea, Ray A., Settlements, Trade and Polities in the Seventeenth-Century Gold Coast (Baltimore, 1982)Google Scholar; Martin, Phyllis M., The External Trade of the Loango Coast, 1576-1870: the Effects of Changing Commercial Relations on the Vili Kingdom of Loango (Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar; Rodney, Walter, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 (Oxford, 1970).Google Scholar There are of course some exceptions to this general picture, and notably Robin Law has continued his research on early modern African history with works such as The Slave Coast of West Africa 1550-1750: the Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on an African Society (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar following on from his earlier work The Oyo Empire, c. 1600-C.1836: a West African Imperialism in the Era of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar and The Horse in West African History: the Role of the Horse in the Societies of Pre-Colonial West Africa (Oxford, 1980).Google Scholar Nevertheless, few historians of Africa would hold that the level of research on precolonial history and society is as extensive as it was 20 or 30 years ago.

⁵ Havik, , “Silences and Soundbytes,” 17–18.Google Scholar

⁶ A prime example of this is the respected Mediterranean historian Abulafia's, David new book The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus (New Haven, 2008)Google Scholar, which gives over five pages to the African perspective on the early Atlantic as against, for instance, 56 to the settlement of the Canaries.

⁷ An egregious example of this is Thomas, Hugh, The Slave Trade: the Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870 (London, 1997).Google Scholar

⁸ The mechanism of this process is well discussed in Havik, , “Silences and Soundbytes,” 17–18.Google Scholar

⁹ It should be noted that these issues build substantially on the excellent work published by José da Silva Horta in this journal some years ago: Horta, José da Silva, “Evidence for a Luso-African Identity in “Portuguese” Accounts on “Guinea of Cape Verde” (Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries)” HA 27(2000), 99–130.Google Scholar Also of note is Mark's, PeterPortuguese Style and Luso-African Identity: Precolonial Senegambia, Sixteenth-Nineteenth Centuries (Bloomington, 2002).Google Scholar These works show the importance of “Luso-African” identity to the region of Cabo Verde and Upper Guinea in the precolonial era. The issue of creolization in the context of Upper Guinea has recently been addressed by Nafafé, José Lingna in Colonial Encounters: Issues of Culture, Hybridity and Creolisation: Portuguese Mercantile Settlers in West Africa (Frankfurt, 2007).Google Scholar My aim here is to build on the insights of these authors and to flesh out more fully their purport in the specific setting of Creole identity in Cabo Verde.

¹⁰ Significant works in English on the islands' formative early modem era is found in two unpublished PhD dissertations: Hall, Trevor P., “The Role of Cape Verde Islanders in Organizing and Operating Maritime Trade between West Africa and Iberian Territories, 1441-1616” (PhD., Johns Hopkins, 1992)Google Scholar, and Green, Tobias, “Masters of Difference: Creolization and the Jewish Presence in Cabo Verde, 1497-1672” (PhD., University of Birmingham, 2007).Google Scholar Some attempts have been made in recent years to address the lacunae in Portuguese with the publication of a general history of Cabo Verde: de Albuquerque, Luis and Santos, Maria Emilia Madeira eds, Historia Gérai de Cabo (3 vols.: Lisbon, 1991–2002).Google Scholar

¹¹ For a more detailed discussion of the role of Cabo Verde in trans-Atlantic slavery see Green, “Masters of Difference,” part 2, chapter 1. Hall, , “Capeverdean Islanders,” 637Google Scholar makes the point on first black slaves. João Barreto makes the point on Grande's, Ribeira being the first European city in the tropics in his Historia da Guiné (Lisbon, 1938), 67.Google Scholar

¹² Monumenta Misionària Africana: África Ocidental: Segunda Série ed. Bràsio, António (7 vols.: Lisbon, 1958–2004)Google Scholar (hereafter MMA).

¹³ Green, Toby, Inquisition: the Reign of Fear (London, 2007; New York, 2009), 88–96.Google Scholar Carvajal ended by being reconciled by the Inquisition of Mexico, dying in his inquisitorial cell in 1590. An excellent summary of the Carvajals tried by the Inquisition in Mexico is Cohen, Martin A., Martyr: Luis de Carvajal, a Secret Jew in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (2d ed.: Albuquerque, 2001).Google Scholar

¹⁴ Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon (hereafter IANTT), Inquisição de Évora, Proceso 8779, folio 66v.

¹⁵ Biblioteca da Ajuda, Lisbon (hereafter BA), Códice 49-X-2, folios 243r-245r; Archivo General de las Indias, Seville (hereafter AGI), Escribanía 119A.

¹⁶ Thus between 1544 and 1550, of the 252 ships legally exporting slaves to the New World, 247 went via Cabo Verde; see Ventura, Maria da Graça Mateus, Negreiros Portugueses na Rota das Indias de Castela, 1541-1555 (Lisbon, 1999), 121–33.Google Scholar A distinct elucidation of this Caboverdean pre-eminence is in Bowser, Frederick P., The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524-1650 (Stanford; 1974), 40–43.Google Scholar Bowser shows how over half of all the slaves imported from Africa to Peru between 1560 and 1650 came from the Senegambia and Guinea-Bissau regions, the area in which the corresponding trading ports of the Caboverdean merchants were located.

¹⁷ Eibl, Ivana, “The Volume of the Early Atlantic Slave Trade, 1450-1521” JAH 38(1997), 31-75, 55–63Google Scholar; Birmingham, , “Trade and Conflict,” 25.Google Scholar

¹⁸ By 1530 Benin was refusing to trade in anything except female slaves for São Tomé; see Ryder, A.F.C., Benin and the Europeans, 1485-1897 (London, 1969), 68.Google Scholar Indeed, Benin was remarkably successful at eschewing trade in slaves with Europeans through the history of the Atlantic trade (see Miller, , “Way of Death,” 108Google Scholar). On the role of the trade in slaves to Elmina and the gold trade there, see Vogt, John L., Portuguese Rule on the Gold Coast (Athens, 1979), 58-59, 70.Google Scholar

¹⁹ AGI, Indiferente 425, Libra 23, 231r.

²⁰ By the end of the seventeenth century other islands were inhabited. Dampier was told that 100 families lived on São Nicolau in 1683: A Collection of Voyages (London, 1729), 1:75.Google Scholar He also described three small towns with a combined population of around 230 people on Maio in 1699 (ibid. 3:17, 20). There were further small populations on Boavista, Brava, and Santo Antào. These communities dated from the latter sixteenth century and had been settled by people from Santiago and Fogo; hence investigation into the origins of Creole identity are concentrated on these two islands in this paper.

²¹ MMA, 3:28-53.

²² Such estimates are moreover broadly in keeping with Francisco de Andrade's better known estimates of 1582, which put the population of Santiago at around 12200 and of Fogo at 2300: MMA 3:99, 102.

²³ Rougé, Jean-Louis, “Apontamentos sobre o léxico de origem Africana dos crioulos da Guiné e de Cabo Verde (Santiago)” in Zimmerman, K. ed., Lenguas Criollas de Base Lexical Española y Portuguesa (Vervuert, 1999), 61.Google Scholar

²⁴ For the 1582 ratios see Andrade's, census, MMA, 3:99, 102.Google Scholar For the ratio in eighteenth-century Jamaica, see Jordan, Winthrop D., The White Man's Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States (New York, 1974), 72.Google Scholar

²⁵ MMA, 4:633.

²⁶ Carreira, António, Documentes para a História das Ilhas de Cabo Werde e “Rios de Guiné” (Séculos XVII e XVIII) (Lisbon, 1983), 72.Google Scholar

²⁷ Gonçalves, Nuno da Silva, Os Jesuftas e a Missäo de Cabo Verde (1604-1642) (Lisbon, 1996), 226.Google Scholar

²⁸ Carreira, , “Documentos,” 72–73.Google Scholar

²⁹ The classic accounts of the Jews in Portugal in the fifteenth century are Tavares, Maria José Pimenta Ferro, Os Judeus em Portugal no Século XV (Lisbon, 1982)Google Scholar and the bigoted, but stubbornly illuminating, d'Azevedo, J. Lùcio, Historia dos Christãos Novos Portugueses (Lisbon, 1922).Google Scholar A revision of the interpretation of the forced conversion and its consequences is provided by José Rodrigues da, Alberto Silva Tavim, Os Judeus na Expansão Portuguesa em Marrocos Durante o Século XVI: Origens e Actividades duma Comunidade (Braga, 1997), 83–84.Google Scholar

³⁰ Carreira, , “Documentas,” 73.Google Scholar

³¹ Those desiring such a study should consult Green, “Masters of Difference.”

³² Freire's case is mentioned briefly in Cohen, Zelinda, “A administração das Ilhas de Cabo Verde pós-União Ibérica: continuidades e rupturas,” in Santos, Madeira ed., História Gerai, 3:87.Google Scholar

³³ IANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Livro 214, ff. 11r-14v. “Suspect” here indicates that Freire was held to be a secret Jew observing certain elements of the Jewish faith; as all the New Christians were baptized (Judaism being illegal in Portugal itself), this was heresy and hence fell within the province of the Inquisition.

³⁴ Ibid, ff. 13v-14r.

³⁵ Ibid, f. 11r.

³⁶ IANTT, Inquisiçâo de Lisboa, Proceso 8626, f. 177v.

³⁷ A fuller discussion of the way in which the overseas activities of the Portuguese Inquisition reveal the economic priorities of the institution can be read in Green, , Inquisition, 159–61.Google Scholar One must nevertheless bear in mind the pioneering work of Millàn, José Martínez, La Hacienda de la Inquiskión, 1478-1700 (Madrid, 1984)Google Scholar, which reveals how far the Spanish Tribunals usually ran at a loss. Thus while economic motivations may not be considered as sufficient to explain the formation of the tribunals, as Llorente originally suggested in the nineteenth century, they certainly played a role in some decisions made by the institution as the documentation cited in Green (above) makes clear.

³⁸ IANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Livro 217, ff. 475r, 479r; this last case is described at IANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Livro 220, f. 352v.

³⁹ IANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Proceso 8626, ff. 166r, 168v.

⁴⁰ For sound scholarship on the question of whether or not the New Christians of the Atlantic maintained elements of Jewish faith, see Israel, Jonathan I., Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World Maritime Empires, 1540-1740 (Leiden, 2002)Google Scholar; and Wachtel, Nathan, La Foi du Souvenir: Labyrinthes Marranes (Paris, 2001).Google Scholar Israel argues that the New Christians of the Atlantic were more faithful adherents to Judaism than is sometimes supposed-and the evidence on Freire would support this (Israel, Diasporas, 109-10). Wachtel's overall argument is that the New Christian diaspora in the Atlantic relied more and more on memory of the faith of ancestors than on anything that could be termed true belief in Judaism.

⁴¹ Aiquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Lisboa (hereafter AHU), Cabo Verde, Caixa 5, doc. 36: note: all documents in the early caixas for Cabo Verde and Guiné in AHU lack folio numbers.

⁴² AHU, Cabo Verde, Caixa 5, doc. 84; this post had been instituted in 1654 - Lereno, Álvaro, Subsídies para a história da moeda em Cabo Verde, 1460-1940 (Lisbon, 1942), 20.Google Scholar

⁴³ AHU, Cabo Verde, Caixa 5, doc. 36.

⁴⁴ AHU, Cabo Verde, Caixa 5A, doc. 155.

⁴⁵ AHU, Cabo Verde, Caixa 5, doc. 36.

⁴⁶ On “doubleness” and “double identity” as a growing facet of Caboverdean identity, see Horta, , “Luso-African Identity,” 99-130, 112.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ AHU, Cabo Verde, Caixa 5, doc. 35.

⁴⁸ AHU, Cabo Verde, Caixa 5, doc. 36.

⁴⁹ This was not just true of Freire; two other applicants for the post, Afanasio da Fonseca and Manoel da Serra, were said to be New Christians; ibid.

⁵⁰ Gil, Juan, Los Conversos y la Inquisición Sevillana (5 vols.: Seville, 2000–2001), 3:37.Google Scholar The sistema de castas eventually unraveled in Latin America owing to the extent and variety of mestizaje; Fredrickson, George M., Racism: a Short History (Princeton, 2002), 40.Google Scholar However, its implementation coincided with the period under study in this paper, which suggests that analogous categories are at work.

⁵¹ Gil, , “Conversos y Inquisición,” 3:37.Google Scholar See also Schorsch, Jonathan, Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World (Cambridge, 2004), 201Google Scholar; and Fredrickson, , “Racism,” 40.Google Scholar “Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain is critical to the history of Western racism because its attitudes and practices served as a kind of segue between the religious intolerance of the Middle Ages and the naturalistic racism of the modern era.” It is also to be hoped that understanding of this process may be deepened by Francisco Bethencourt's history of race in the Atlantic world, (forthcoming: Cambridge, 2009).

⁵² On the “one-drop rule” see Comas, Juan, Racial Myths (Paris, 1951), 21.Google Scholar

⁵³ MMA, 4:198-99.

⁵⁴ On the importance of New Christian identity in the Atlantic context for these people in Cabo Verde in these years, see Green, “Masters of Difference,” part 3.

⁵⁵ IAN/TT, Inquisição de Lisboa, Livro 239, f. 89r.

⁵⁶ AHU, Cabo Verde, Caixa 5A, doc. 186.

⁵⁷ There are very many examples of this. To name but two, we can cite the accusation of Pero Moniz of protecting New Christians in 1546, and the accusation of Diogo Barassa to the State in 1559 for abusing his position. See Green, , “Masters of Difference,” 82-83, 111.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Newitt, Malyn, A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion, 1400-1668 (Abingdon, 2005), 257.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Anderson, Perry, “The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci” New Left Review 100(1976/1977), 22.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ MMA, 2: 69.

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² Vaughan, Megan, Creating the Creole Island: Slavery in Eighteenth Century Mauritius (Durham, 2005), 208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶³ Quint, Nicolas, Le Cap-Verdien: origines et devenir d'une langue métisse (Paris, 2000), 19.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Boulègue, Jean, Les Luso-Africains de la Sénégambie: XVIe-XIXe siècle (Dakar, 1972), 49.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ MMA, 4:492.

⁶⁶ Boulègue, , “Luso-Africains,” 49.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (2d ed.: London, 1991), 12–18.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Thilmans, Guy and de Moraes, Nize Izabel, eds, “La Description de la Côte de Guinée du Père Balthasar Barreira (1606)” BIFAN 34B, 29.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Benítez-Rojo, Antonio, “Three Words Towards Creolization” in Balutan-sky, Kathleen M. and Soireau, Marie-Agnès, eds., Caribbean Creolization: Reflections on the Cultural Dynamics of Language, Literature, and Identity (Gainesville, 1998), 56.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Collection of Voyages, 1:75.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Schorsch, , Jews and Btocks, 179–81.Google Scholar

⁷² Although one must note that the exclusions required by the doctrine of limpeça were not uniformly applied in Portugal either, and that there were always exceptions; see Fredrickson, 34.

⁷³ Holm, John, Pidgins and Creoles (2 vols.: Cambridge, 1988), 1:15.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Ibid., 1:46-52.

⁷⁵ Quint, , “Cap-Verdien,” 119–96.Google Scholar See also the recent work of Jacobs, Bart, “Los fundamentos Afro Portugueses del Papiamento: una comparacion linguistica entre el Papiamento y el Criollo Caboverdeiano de Santiago,” (M.A. thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2008; unpublished MA dissertation).Google Scholar