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,
Culture of Cape Verde Portuguese language and in Cape Verdean Creole. Eugénio Tavares was the first author who published poetry (Morna poems) in Creole. The rise of cultural, social, and political emancipation of Cape Verde in the 1930s was reflected in the literary reviews "Claridade" and "Certeza", that published works from Cape Verdean authors like João Cleofas Martins, Luís Romano de Madeira Melo, Ovídio Martins, Jorge Barbosa, António Aurélio Gonçalves, Henrique Teixeira de Sousa and Baltasar Lopes da Silva (Osvaldo Alcântara). After independence, there are modern writers such as Germano Almeida, Manuel Veiga, Arménio Vieira, Orlanda Amarílis and more. Cape Verde is known internationally