Landowners-merchants:

trade and society in Cape Verde, XV and XVI

Francisco Aimara Carvalho Ribeiro

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

This paper aims to present the role of the archipelago of Cape Verde and the african

region of Senegambia in the assembly and consolidation of the Atlantic slave trade circuit in the

fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The islands stood out as a warehouse for slaves, mainly by the

actionsof the residents of Cape Verde as intermediaries in the Atlantic slave trade for the

Madeira Islands, Canary Islands, for the Iberian Peninsula and to America, especially the

Caribbean and spanish Central America. In this sense, we análise the routes ans numbers of the

tract not only as a flow of goods, but also as a huge population movement involving thousands

of individuals from different cultures with direct consequences on the formation of Cape Verde

society flourishing then.