About Dakar

The Cape Vert Peninsula was settled, no later than the 15th century, by the Lebu, an ethnic group related to the neighboring Wolof and Sereer. The original villages: Ouakam, Ngor, Yoff and Hann, still constitute distinctively Lebu neighborhoods of the city today. Meanwhile, in 1444, the Portuguese arrived on the island of Gorée, founding a settlement there, and by 1536, had begun using it as a base for the export of slaves. By this time, the mainland of Cap-Vert was under control of the Jolof Empire, as part of the western province of Cayor — which seceded from Jolof in its own right in 1549. A new Lebu village, called Ndakarou, was established directly across from Gorée in the 17th century to service the European trading factory with food and drinking water. Goree was captured by the United Netherlands in 1588, who gave it its present name (spelled Goeree, after Goeree-Overflakkee in Holland). The island was to switch hands between the Portuguese and Dutch a couple more times before falling to the English under Admiral Holmes on 23 January 1664, and finally to the French in 1677. Though under continuous French administration after that, Métis families, descendant from Dutch and French traders and African wives, dominated the slave trade. The infamous "House of Slaves" was built here in 1776