Cape Verde when Portuguese explorers discovered and colonized the islands, establishing the first European settlement in the tropics. Ideally located for the Atlantic slave trade, the islands grew prosperous throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, attracting merchants, privateers, and pirates. The end of slavery in the 19th century led to economic decline and emigration. Cape Verde gradually recovered as an important commercial center and stopover for shipping routes. Incorporated as an overseas department of Portugal in 1951, the islands continued to campaign for independence, which was peacefully achieved in 1975. Since the early 1990s, Cape Verde has been a stable representative democracy,
Literature of Cape Verde publish after independence. Mariano also wrote books that were about some earlier great Cape Verdean writers. Germano Almeida wrote "O dia das calças roladas" in 1982, "The Last Will and Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo" in 1989 which mixes humor with cruel realism, sometimes pathetic, in a modern writing favoring the free indirect style. It was later made into a movie in 1997. He later wrote on the History of Cape Verde titled "" in 2003. His recent works are main set in around Mindelo including "De Monte Cara vê-se o mundo" in 2014, not long after the bay