A Note on French and Spanish Voyages to Sierra Leone 1550–1585

1991 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 137-141
Author(s):  
P.E.H. Hair

Writing in the 1590s about Sierra Leone, André Alvares de Almada, a Cape Verde Islands trader who had probably at one time visited Sierra Leone, commended its peoples for being “unfriendly to the English and French,” not least by fighting John Hawkins—the latter remark obviously a reference to Hawkins' well-known visit in 1567/68. But when did the French visit Sierra Leone? Elsewhere I have cited the evidence for three French voyages to the Sierra Leone estuary in the later 1560s, probably in 1565, 1566, and 1567. I now analyze archive material published in two French works that appeared long ago but are probably little known to Africanists, since both concentrate on voyages to the Americas. The first source calendars items in the registres de tabellionage (notarial registers) of the Normandy port of Honfleur relating to intercontinental voyages, the items being mainly financial agreements made before or after voyages. Dates, names of ships, and destinations are supplied for the period from 1574 to 1621: what proportion of all intercontinental voyages from Honfleur during that period is represented in the registers is uncertain. But in the eleven years between 1574 and 1584, there are recorded 24 voyages to both Guinea and America, the ships proceeding across the Atlantic from Africa. The American destination is usually described as “Indes de Pérou,” meaning the Caribbean. The African destination of 15 named vessels making 19 voyages is “Serlione” or “coste de Serlion,” in 15 instances given singly, otherwise with the addition of “et Guinée,” “et Guinée et coste de Bonnes-Gens,” or “et cap de Vert et coste de Mina.” The remaining voyages were to “Guinée,” to “cap de Vert [Cape Verde, i.e. Senegal],” to “cap des Bonnes-Gens” [Ivory Coast], or to more than one of these.

Author(s):  

Abstract A new distribution map is provided for Papilio demodocus Esper [Lepidoptera: Papilionidae] Orange dog, citrus butterfly, citrus swallowtail, African lime butterfly. Attacks Citrus and other Rutaceae. Information is given on the geographical distribution in AFRICA, Bioko, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands, Chad, Comoro Islands, Congo, Equatorial, Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Reunion, Sao, Tome, & Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Togoland, Uganda, Zaire, Zimbabwe, ASIA, Oman, Saudi Arabia, South Yemen, Yemen.


1999 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER MARK

During the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, Portugal established a trading presence along the Upper Guinea Coast from Senegal to Sierra Leone. Emigrants from Portugal known as lançados – some of them Jews seeking to escape religious persecution – settled along the coast, where many of them married women from local communities. By the early sixteenth century, Luso-Africans, or ‘Portuguese’ as they called themselves, were established at trading centers from the Petite Côte in Senegal, south to Sierra Leone. Descendants of Portuguese immigrants, of Cape Verde islanders, and of West Africans, the Luso-Africans developed a culture that was itself a synthesis of African and European elements. Rich historical documentation allows a case study of the changing ways Luso-Africans identified themselves over the course of three centuries.The earliest lançados established themselves along the coast as commercial middlemen between African and European traders and as coastal traders between Sierra Leone and Senegambia. Their position was formally discouraged by the Portuguese Crown until the second decade of the sixteenth century, but they nevertheless played an important role in trade with Portugal and the Cape Verde islands. Lançado communities were permanently settled on the Petite Côte, while in Sierra Leone and Rio Nunez much early commerce was in the hands of lançados who sailed there regularly from S. Domingos, north of present day Bissau. The offspring of these lançados and African women were called filhos de terra and were generally considered to be ‘Portuguese’.Throughout the sixteenth century, the descendants of the lançados maintained close commercial ties with the Cape Verde islands. Cape Verdeans were themselves the offspring of mixed Portuguese and West African marriages. Sharing elements of a common culture and united by marriage and economic ties, mainland Luso-Africans and Cape Verdeans represented a socially complex and geographically dispersed community. Cape Verdeans, like mainland Luso-Africans, resolutely maintained that they were ‘Portuguese’, and both sub-groups employed the same essentially cultural criteria of group identification.


1989 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 375-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. E. H. Hair

As part of a projected series of edited early Portuguese texts on Guinea, in the early 1960s the late Vice-Admiral Avelino Teixeira da Mota began to assemble, partly from archives, documents for a volume he intended to call Jesuit Reports. As it happened, many of the documents, especially those from Jesuit sources, were published in 1968 by another Portuguese scholar, the late P. Antońio Brásio. But Teixeira da Mota did not abandon his project, partly because he considered that Brásio did not always take account of all copies of a document and all variant readings, and partly because Brásio was unable to accompany the documents with informed Africanist annotation. In the 1970s Teixeira da Mota sent me his own collection of documents to translate into English— and also so that I could ultimately contribute part of their annotation. My translations were completed just before Teixeira da Mota died in 1982, and I have since translated a number of other documents, all from Brásio, which help to round out the picture. Not all of the documents were written by the Jesuits themselves, but most were.When it became clear that the publication of Teixeira da Mota's series would proceed at best very slowly, I began to publish those of the translations which were of material in the public domain, beginning with the material printed in the early seventeenth century by Guerreiro. Since much of the material related to Sierra Leone, I published in the Africana Research Bulletin of the Institute of African Studies at Freetown, and am much indebted to the organizers of the journal for providing an outlet.


1981 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-157
Author(s):  
Palle Johnsen

AbstractNotes are provided on 57 species from Cameroun, Cape Verde Islands, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone. The male of Cyphocerastis pulcherrima Ramme is described and figured. There are several first records: two from Guinea, one from Ghana, and five from Liberia. Eurysternacris brevipes Chopard, ♂ and Gastrimargus procerus (Gerstaecker), ♂ ♀ are depicted, also nymphs of Zonocerus variegatus (Linn.).


Author(s):  

Abstract A new distribution map is provided for Cylas puncticollis Boheman. Coleoptera: Curculionidae (sweet potato weevil, potato root borer). Attacks sweet potato, some other species of Ipomoea and also maize. Information is given on the geographical distribution in Africa, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zaire, Zambia.


Author(s):  
Miloš Černý ◽  
Michael von Tschirnhaus

Abstract New faunistic data on the distribution of 50 species of the family Agromyzidae from the Afrotropical Region are given. Chromatomyia syngenesiae Hardy, 1849 and Phytomyza ranunculi (Schrank, 1803) are firstly recorded for the Afrotropics and 47 species are firstly recorded for the following countries: Angola, Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe. For each country the number of known species are put together in a table. An updated Afrotropical checklist is added. The most peculiar genitalia of the redetected Ophiomyia dhofarensis are discussed in connection with other species, among them: Ophiomyia yunnanensis comb. nov. [= Ophiomyia dumosa syn. nov.]. Ophiomyia nigrimaculata comb. nov. is treated taxomically, too. The type-species of the Pseudonapomyza acanthacearum-group is re-defined. Ranunculus was firstly confirmed as host plant genus of Phytomyza subeximia which develops between its seeds, a rare substrate in the genus. Napomyza strana stat. rev. was redetected in an altitude of 3353 m a.s.l. An eclector collecting method is described which lets estimate the natural proportional abundance of Agromyzidae compared with all other Diptera in the groundlevel vegetation of a country.


Planta Medica ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 75 (09) ◽  
Author(s):  
C Grosso ◽  
G Teixeira ◽  
I Gomes ◽  
ES Martins ◽  
JG Barroso ◽  
...  

Oryx ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine M. Hille ◽  
Nigel J. Collar

AbstractScavenging raptors have been postulated to be declining at a rate far higher than predatory raptors. To test this hypothesis we reviewed the historical and present status of the seven raptor species—three scavengers (two kites and a vulture), one partial scavenger (a buzzard) and three species (osprey and two falcons) that take live prey—that breed on the Cape Verde islands. Scavenging raptors have experienced steeper declines and more local extinctions than non-scavengers in Cape Verde, with the partial scavenger midway between the two groups. Causes of scavenger decline include incidental poisoning, direct persecution and declines in the availability of carcasses and other detritus. These findings, which highlight the conservation importance of the island of Santo Antão, indicate the priority that needs to be accorded to scavengers, particularly in Europe where many insular populations are reaching unsustainable levels.


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