Abstract
This study aims to shed some light on an ambiguous, historical figure of Modern European and African history, Antonio da Noli, who lived during the 15th century. Various sources presented Antonio da Noli as the “discoverer” of Cape Verde, although other versions of history indicate the Venetian Alvise da Ca’ da Mosto and the Portuguese Diogo Gomes as the possible discoverers of this Atlantic archipelago. Additional sources defend that Cape Verde was first discovered by African and Arab populations before the arrival of the Portuguese navigators. This study, through a historical analysis of primary sources of the same navigators here considered, as well as secondary sources of Italian, Portuguese and Cape-Verdian authors, aims at presenting how some of the historical dark points of the life and maritime adventures of Antonio da Noli have been used by three fundamental historiographical traditions, each with different political objectives: the Italian, the Portuguese and the Cape Verdeans. The conclusion is that Antonio da Noli and the discovery of Cape Verde left an ambiguous legacy which until today is in dispute between nationalism, colonialism and post-colonialism.
Highlights
This study aims to shed some light on an ambiguous, historical figure of Modern European and African history, Antonio da Noli, who lived during the 15th century
The conclusion is that Antonio da Noli and the discovery of Cape Verde left an ambiguous legacy which until today is in dispute between nationalism, colonialism and post-colonialism
This research represented a first attempt to cross different perspectives on the first colonization of Cape Verde by the three countries involved in its discovery, namely Italy, Portugal and Cape Verde starting with the Ligurian navigator, Antonio da Noli
Summary
An ambiguous legacy characterizes the historical figure of Antonio da Noli, an Italian navigator who, under the orders of the Portuguese crown, supposedly. As a matter of fact, only in 1960, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Cape Verde’s discovery, Portuguese scholars demonstrated a systematic attempt to exalt the figure of Diogo Gomes, promoting his image in the same insular colony (Barros, 2017) This historiographical and political position resulted from a long process of strengthening the Portuguese Salazarian nationalism, which started in the 1930’s with the Colonial Act (1930) and with the Constitution of 1933, and which found in the celebrations of 1960 a moment of exaltation in a new form of relationship with its colonial countries (Ferreira Cascão, 1992). In Cape Verde, the diversification of the various positions between colonial and post-colonial approaches was yet even more evident than in Italy and Portugal, as described below
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