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 Notebook) in 1955 which won the Camilo Pessanha Award, the first Cape Verdean book to be awarded. Aguinaldo Fonseca was the forgotten poet, though his poems were published in "Linha do Horizonte" collection in 1951. At the time, writers like Manuel Lopes would be linked to resistance movements. Some writers were exiled to some European countries in the years before independence. Cape Verde became independent on July 5, 1975. Cape Verdean literature began to flourish further, the work "The Island of Contenda" was published in 1976. Writers like Henrique Teixeira de Sousa, Gabriel Mariano and others continued to write and