Lançados

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The Lançados (literally the thrown out ones) were settlers and adventurers of Portuguese origin in Senegambia, the Cape Verde Islands and other areas of the West Africa. Many were Jews escaping persecution from the Portuguese Inquisition, and many had wives from the local African groups. Sometimes the name also applied to their African descendants.

Although never large in numbers, they were crucial intermediaries between the Portuguese State and nationals with the native African tribes, and were the "half-caste traders" that were important in the economies of towns like Bissau and Cacheu.

They were the progenitors of the Crioulo language and culture.

[edit] References

• Peter Mark, "Portuguese" Style and Luso-African Identity: Precolonial Senegambia, Sixteenth-Nineteenth Centuries (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002)