Sao Tome and Principe

Overview

The islands and islets lie 200km from the west coast of Gabon. Generally not impinged upon by people, the beaches forests and volcanoes have not been ruined by human incursion. The visitor should be prepared for the isolation and to make reservations at one of the restaurants so that enough food can be obtained.

Sao Tome is a small island, and the capital city, also called Sao Tome only has 25,000 inhabitants; Principe is even smaller.

Sao tome is of volcanic origin and the cloud capped volcanoes, thick jungle and empty beaches are stunningly beautiful. Principe is flatter but the beaches are somewhat better and the chances of meeting fellow foreigners are even slimmer.

History

The islands were first discovered by Portuguese navigators between 1469 and 1472. The first successful settlement of Sao Tome was established in 1493 by Avaro Caminha who received the land as a grant from the Portuguese crown. Principe was settled in 1500 under a similar arrangement. By the mid-1500s with the help of slave labor the Portuguese settlers had turned the islands into Africa's foremost exporter of sugar. Sao Tome and Principe were taken over and administered by the Portuguese crown in 1522 and 1573 respectively.

Sugar cultivation declined over the next 100 years and by the mid-1600s Sao Tome was little more than a port of call for bunkering ships. In the early 1800s two new cash crops coffee and cocoa were introduced. The rich volcanic soils proved well suited to the new cash crop industry and soon extensive plantations ( rocas ) owned by Portuguese companies or absentee landlords occupied almost all of the good farmland. By 1908 Sao Tome had become the world's largest producer of cocoa still the country's most important crop.

The rocas system which gave the plantation managers a high degree of authority led to abuses against the African farm workers. Although Portugal officially abolished slavery in 1876 the practice of forced paid labor continued. In the early 1900s an internationally publicized controversy arose over charges that Angolan contract workers were being subjected to forced labor and unsatisfactory working conditions. Sporadic labor unrest and dissatisfaction continued well into the 20th century culminating in an outbreak...more