Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - São Tomé and Príncipe

Starting point is 00:00:00 Located in the Gulf of Guinea off the west coast of Africa lies the island nation of Sao Tome and Principae. Sao Tome and Principi have the distinction of being one of the smallest countries in the world by both population and area, and as such, it's a country that many people have never heard of. But despite its small size, its geography and history makes it a country unlike any other in Africa. Learn more about the nation of Sao Tomei and Principi and how it came to be on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now.

Starting point is 00:00:58 Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Before I get any further, for all of my Portuguese-speaking listeners, I should address the pronunciation of the name of this country. The proper pronunciation in Portuguese, which is the national language, is Psalm Tome and Principi. When I visited the country in 2014, we had an officer on the ship I was on who was from Brazil, and insisted on using the correct Portuguese pronunciation for the country. The difference in pronunciation primarily comes from the diacritical marks, which are found in Portuguese and are not found in English. For the rest of this episode, I'm going to use the English pronunciation, which basically ignores the diacritical marks. so it will be Sao Tomé and Principae. That being said, the story of Sao Tomé and Principae

Starting point is 00:01:51 begins with its geography. The islands of Sao Tomé and Principae are located in the eastern end of the Gulf of Guinea in what is known as the Bight of Biafra. This is basically the corner where the west coast of Africa goes from running north-south to running east-west. The islands are volcanic and origin and are part of the Cameroon Line. The Cameroon Line is a 1600,000 or 1,000-mile chain of volcanoes that extends from the African mainland into the Gulf of Guinea. In addition to Mount Cameroon on the mainland and the two islands of Sao-Tome and Principae, the chain also includes the islands of Bioko and Anabon, which are part of the country of Equatorial Guinea. These islands are believed to be approximately 30 million years old.

Starting point is 00:02:33 Sao-tome, which is the larger of the two islands by both population and area, is 280 kilometers due west of the nation of Gabon and 428 kilometers due south of the nation of Nigeria. It's also located very close to the equator. The southernmost point of the island of Sao Tomé is two kilometers north of the equator, and it was sailing to Sao Tomé when I was inducted into the Order of Neptune, which is what you do when you cross the equator on a ship, and that is a whole other story. The island of Principae is located 142 kilometers northeast of Sao Tomé, and the island of Sao Tomé is approximately six times the size of Princepe. The hill of The history of Sao Tomei and Principae is also very different from almost every other country in Africa.

Starting point is 00:03:19 Africa, as you know, is the cradle of humanity. Humans and human ancestors have existed on the continent for almost two million years. However, there is no evidence that humans ever lived on the islands of Sao Tomei or Principi. This is in and of itself a really interesting thing. Bioko Island, which is the main island of Equatorial Guinea and part of the Cameroon line, was settled and did have native inhabitants. However, Bioko is only 32 kilometers from the coast and can easily be seen from the mainland. As far as we know, and there's been no evidence found to the contrary, the first humans to set foot on Sao Tomé, where the Portuguese explorers Joao de Santorum and Perrault Escobar.

Starting point is 00:03:59 The dates which are celebrated for the first arrivals are December 21st, 1771 for Sao Tomé, and July 17, 1742 for Principae. December 21st is St. Thomas's Day, which is whom the island of Sao Tomé is named after. January 17th was St. Anthony's Day, and the island was originally named after St. Anthony, but was renamed Prince A.mé, or the Prince's Island, after Alfonso, the hereditary prince of Portugal,

Starting point is 00:04:26 the son of King John II. The Portuguese found these uninhabited islands to be a great place to set up a settlement. In 1493, Alvaro Cominia received a grant from the Portuguese crown and established the first settlement on Sao Tomé. Getting people to come and live at the settlement was difficult. Many Jews in Portugal were sent to live there, including 2,000 Jewish children who were sent to work in the sugarcane fields. However, it wasn't long before Sao Tomei began the importation of slaves from Africa.

Starting point is 00:04:56 The first slaves were brought to Sao Tomei to work in the fields. In 1510 alone, between 10 to 12,000 slaves were brought to the island of Sao Tamei. Slaves were not only imported to work on plantations in Sao Tama, but Sao Tomei also saw served as a human transit hub for slaves from all over Africa. Slaves were brought from Angola, the Congo, and along the slave coast of what is today Ghana and Togo. From there, they were sent mainly to Brazil and the Caribbean. At one point, Sao Tome accounted for a full 80% of the imports to Brazil, mostly from the human trafficking of slaves. As there were no indigenous people on the island, the number of slaves was overwhelmingly larger than the number of Portuguese. This eventually

Starting point is 00:05:39 led to a major slave revolt on the island in 1595. The revolt was led by a man named Amador. For decades, slaves had escaped from plantations on Sao Tame and settled in communities in the interior of the island. They were known as Maroons, and there had been slave and maroon revolts on Sao Tome for years. But throughout the 16th century, sugar had become less important as sugar production started to increase in Brazil. By 1595, with the sugar economy on the island and declined there was infighting between the church, the government, and plantation owners. Amador used this instability to launch his revolt. It actually began small.

Starting point is 00:06:16 On July 9, 1595, Amador and two of his lie lieutenants, Lazzaro and Domingo led a group into a church where they killed Portuguese men attending mass. From there, the revolt spread rapidly. Within days, Amador had recruited over 5,000 slaves from the island to take part in his revolt. Amador had become the African Spartacus. He proclaimed himself king and organized his revolutionaries into an army. Amador and his army systematically set about destroying the Portuguese infrastructure of Sao Tamei. They ended up burning 60 of the 85 sugar mills on the island. The revolt, however, ended up being short-lived.

Starting point is 00:06:54 After an attack on July 28th, Amador's soldiers took heavy casualties with over 200 killed. After the attack, the governor of the island offered clemency to anyone who surrendered, and over 4,000 took the offer. One of Amador's lieutenants betrayed him, and he and several other leaders of the revolt were captured by the Portuguese. On August 14th, Amador was executed, drawn, and quartered. Amador's slave revolt was one of the largest in the history of the Atlantic slave trade. After Sao Tome and Principi became independent, Amador was declared a national hero. His face was on every note in the original currency issued by the country, the Dobra, and January 4th is a national day in Sao Tomein-Principé in his honor.

Starting point is 00:07:35 Amador's revolt accelerated what had been happening with the Sao Tomei economy. Sugar became less essential and slaves became even more important, continuing its role as a transit point. While slavery remained the basis of the economy, through the 17th and 18th centuries, the number of Europeans on the island dwindled due to tropical diseases. Most of the three people on the islands were mixed race and they began taking leadership positions. In the 19th century, agriculture made a return in the form of cacao and car. coffee. Both products were successful and grown on plantations, which were mostly owned by absentee Portuguese landlords. The slave trade dwindled through the 19th century as it was

Starting point is 00:08:15 outlawed in more countries, and it was eventually outlawed by Portugal in 1876. However, it didn't necessarily stop the practice in Sao Tomé. For decades after the official emancipation of slaves on the island, the practice continued even though it was illegal. The forced labor conditions continued well into the 20th century. If it was intendically slavery, it was the closest thing to it. There was labor unrest and riots that took place throughout the 20th century, which culminated in the Batapa massacre on February 3, 1953. Members of the Portuguese International and State Defense Police, which was the security force under the Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar, murdered approximately 2,000 Creole peasants on the island. This was an enormous percentage of the total population of

Starting point is 00:09:03 Sao Tomé at the time. The post-war period saw a wave of decolonization and independence for countries throughout Africa. In the 1950s and 1960s, Britain, France, and other countries gave up their colonies, but Portugal stubbornly refused. The movement for the liberation of Sao Tomé and Principae was created, which was primarily run out of the neighboring country of Gabon. Salazar stepped down in 1968, but was replaced by Marcelo Caitano, who continued the dictatorial system known as the Estado Novo. However, on April 21st. 24th, 1974, a coup took place in Portugal known as the Carnation Revolution. The new government instantly changed course on its policies towards its African colonies and announced that they

Starting point is 00:09:44 would let them all become independent. This included Sao Tome and Principi, which officially became an independent country on July 12, 1975. Since independence, Sao Tome and Principi has had it better than most West African countries. Manuel Pinto de Costa, the leader of the Sao Tome independence movement became the first president of the country, a position which he held until 1991. After 1990, the country instituted a series of reforms that allowed for opposition parties. And in 1991, a free election took place where an exiled candidate, Miguel Trovada, actually won. For the most part, save for a one-week military coup in 2003, the country has been mostly democratic, with open, transparent elections and peaceful transitions of power.

Starting point is 00:10:29 The economy of Sao Tome and Principé has had its ups and. and downs. After independence, all the plantations, which had been previously owned by absentee Portuguese landlords, were nationalized, which ended up resulting in the collapse of the COCA industry. There was an eventual privatization of nationalized industries, and the COCA industry rebounded, and today it's its largest export. One of the biggest potentials for the economy could be the oil and gas industry. There are oil and gas reserves offshore, but they have yet to be fully exploited. Another potential source of economic growth in the future is travel and tourism. I visited both the islands of Sao Tome and Principi when I took a ship up the west coast of Africa.

Starting point is 00:11:08 Both islands are largely unknown as a tourist destination, but both of them have enormous potential. Sao Tome and Principi has also largely escaped many of the problems that other West African countries have faced after independence. There haven't been any civil wars, and the HIV-AIDS epidemic which ravaged parts of Africa has for the most part bypassed the islands. Sao Tome and Principé is one of Africa's smallest and least populous nations. Despite dealing with de facto slavery for longer than almost anywhere else on Earth, this tiny island country has managed to become one of the more successful stories in Africa. Given its relatively stable democracy, natural beauty, rich volcanic soils,

Starting point is 00:11:48 and still largely untapped oil and gas resources, Sao Tomei and Principi may have a very bright, future. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today I have a comment that was left over on Spotify, where, if you didn't know, you can leave reviews on individual episodes. Joseph Pontillo left a comment on my recent episode on multiple births. He wrote, this is absolutely crazy. I've been listening for a very, very long time. Every night when I take my dog on a bike ride, my wife and I just found out today were having triplets. Today. Wow. Wow.

Starting point is 00:12:28 Well, thanks, Joseph, and congratulations. With triplets, you are really going to have your hands full. I've had many people reach out to me with strange coincidences when episodes are released, but yours is probably the greatest one yet. And if you're looking for names for triplets, if I may be so bold, I'll just throw this out there, perhaps you should consider the names, everything everywhere and daily. They might also work as middle names as well.

Starting point is 00:12:55 Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostogram, you two can have it right on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - São Tomé and Príncipe

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