"On July 22, 1843, the 22-gun first class sloop-of-war USS Saratoga sailed into Porto Praya (modern-day Praia), the chief town in what was then the Portuguese-held Cape Verde Islands. Under the command of the 49-year-old Captain Matthew Calbraith Perry, the Saratoga was one of four ships (...) which constituted America’s first-ever standing military commitment to Africa, the United States Navy’s Africa Squadron.
Under the provisions of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, ratified one year earlier, the United States committed itself to maintaining a naval presence with an aggregate of at least 80 guns off the coast of Africa to help enforce the international ban on the transatlantic slave trade against American-flagged vessels. Acting under orders from Secretary of the Navy (...) Perry, the squadron’s flag officer, negotiated with the colonial authorities and established what would, for the next two decades, be the Navy’s only permanent squadron. Thus began America’s relations with what eventually emerged as quite an exceptional African nation, the Republic of Cape Verde. (...)".
Under the provisions of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, ratified one year earlier, the United States committed itself to maintaining a naval presence with an aggregate of at least 80 guns off the coast of Africa to help enforce the international ban on the transatlantic slave trade against American-flagged vessels. Acting under orders from Secretary of the Navy (...) Perry, the squadron’s flag officer, negotiated with the colonial authorities and established what would, for the next two decades, be the Navy’s only permanent squadron. Thus began America’s relations with what eventually emerged as quite an exceptional African nation, the Republic of Cape Verde. (...)".Imagem do USS Saratoga retirada da Wikipedia/USS Saratoga/1842.
O artigo, de 2008, continua, fazendo um breve resumo da história de Cabo Verde e uma análise aprofundada à estratégia político-económica do país na actualidade. Vale a pena "perder" uns minutos e ler.
