Professor Malyn Newitt

The first general history of the archipelago available in English, set within a broader regional, oceanic and global tapestry.The Cabo Verde Islands are now a popular tourist destination but, guide books apart, there is little in print in English that covers their history and culture. This book offers a readable account not only of the islands’ past, but also of their place in the wider story of the South Atlantic’s Portuguese-speaking communities.First settled in the fifteenth century, the inhabitants of Cabo Verde were of diverse origins. Some came from Portugal, others arrived as slaves from mainland Africa, and a third element comprised Jewish exiles from the Iberian Peninsula. From the earliest days, the islanders developed a mixed Creole culture with its own Creole Portuguese language. They had close relations with people of the upper Guinea coast, where many of them settled, and with the Guinea islands. Meanwhile the archipelago became a hub of the Atlantic slave trade.Cabo Verde has also had a strategic importance— its history has to be seen in a global context, broader than simply that of the Portuguese imperial story. Malyn Newitt also fills a major gap in the bibliography of Atlantic history, slavery and the history of the African diaspora in the Atlantic.

The Zambezi is the fourth-longest river in Africa, and one of the continent''s principal arteries of movement, migration, conquest and commerce. In this book, historian Malyn Newitt quotes rarely used Portuguese sources that throw vivid light on the culture of the river peoples and their relations with the Portuguese creole society of the prazos. Hitherto unused manuscript material illustrates Portuguese and British colonial rule over the people of the long-lived Lunda kingdoms, and the Lozi of the Barotse Floodplain. The Zambezi became a war zone during the ''Scramble for Africa'', the struggle for independence and the civil wars that followed the departure of colonial powers. Recent history has also seen the river''s wild nature tamed by the introduction of steamers and the building of bridges and dams. These developments have changed the character of the waterway, and impacted--often drastically--the ecological systems of the valley and those settled along its course. The Zambezi traces the history of the communities that have lived along this great river; their relationship with the states formed on the high veldt; and the ways they have adapted to the vagaries of the Zambezi itself, with its annual floods, turbulent rapids and dramatic gorges.