Memórias do Ultramar: os escritos sobre a “Guiné de Cabo-Verde” e a influência dos processos de crioulização. (séc. XVI e XVII)

Abstract

The first Portuguese experience in sub-Saharan Africa, still in the mid-fifteenth century, was marked by presence in two regions that formed an integrated space, in this work called "Guinean Cape Verde". This area included both the Cape Verde Islands as well as the Guinean coast, between the Senegal River and Sierra Leone, close of Cape Mount. The events in both regions were strictly connected, since in the islands the settlement by Portuguese at no time detached itself from the dynamics of the Coast. The interconnected trade, the presence of slaves and women who came to form the miscegenated society of the islands were some of these factors of cohesion. Moreover, much of what was observed in the insular social formation was due both to the African reality and to its historical past, marked by a primary creolization. In this context, individuals such as André Álvares de Almada, André Donelha and Francisco de Lemos Coelho were exponents of a social phenomenon observed both in the elite of the islands and later in other Atlantic societies. It is about their lives, context, trajectories and works that this work is dedicated, thinking the formation of their identities and reflections in their memorials, produced after decades as traders in the Cape Verdean-Guinean space.