Far-flung Neighbors: The Cape Verde Islands…

Join us for a lecture by maritime historian David Abulafia (Professor of Mediterranean History at the University of Cambridge). In the fifteenth century, the Portuguese settled four separate archipelagoes, all of which were previously uninhabited, over a vast space of water in the eastern Atlantic. This meant that they created human societies from scratch on territories such as the Cape Verde Islands. How does one create a society from scratch? What effect does this have on the physical environment? Who came to live in such places? How did the discovery of the Americas affect these islands, and how did the islands affect the history of the Americas? With an emphasis on the Cape Verde islands, and with the use of the latest archaeological discoveries there, an attempt will be made to answer these questions. The lecture will be followed by a reception. This lecture is co-sponsored by the John Carter Brown Library and the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University.

RSVP to jcb-events@brown.edu not necessary but appreciated.