During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the archipelago of Cape Verde was a central hub for the Portuguese branch of the Portuguese traffic on human beings. This created a slavery society, where the Portuguese Crown granted settlers extensive plots of land. Nevertheless, former enslaved men and women and freed people of color occupied, lived, and worked on this land for centuries. Continued and uncontested land occupation gave poor men and women a sense of ownership and entitlement. But since these men and women often lacked title of their land they enjoyed a precarious legal tenure that could be questioned in courts. Moreover, over the centuries, the archipelago of Cape Verde suffered with harsh droughts and lack of water. These environmental conditions intensified the conflict of irrigated land. This section of the project will examine how litigation over land reached Cape Verdean and Portuguese courts. The project will give special attention to how the archipelago’s environmental characteristics impacted judicial litigation and the framing of legal arguments in courts.