Landowners-merchants: trade and society in Cape Verde, XV and XVI Francisco Aimara Carvalho Ribeiro Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro This paper aims to present the role of the archipelago of Cape Verde and the african region of Senegambia in the assembly and consolidation of the Atlantic slave trade circuit in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The islands stood out as a warehouse for slaves, mainly by the actionsof the residents of Cape Verde as intermediaries in the Atlantic slave trade for the Madeira Islands, Canary Islands, for the Iberian Peninsula and to America, especially the Caribbean and spanish Central America. In this sense, we análise the routes ans numbers of the tract not only as a flow of goods, but also as a huge population movement involving thousands of individuals from different cultures with direct consequences on the formation of Cape Verde society flourishing then.