Cacheu

Cacheu stands on the river of the same name, upstream from its Atlantic estuary. African and Luso-African merchants made it an important meeting point of the coastal and inland trading networks of Upper Guinea. In 1588 Manuel Lopes Cardoso fortified the settlement with the permission of a local ruler. Cacheu became a major port in the Atlantic trade in enslaved people. Portuguese companies sought to control its commerce in the seventeenth century, while local rulers and merchants continued to exercise power beyond the fort.