Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery, and Colonial Africa

Chapter Three: Sleeping Sickness and Slavery

 Three Sleeping Sickness and Slavery Twelve hours on a hot, stifling steamer brought Joseph Burtt to Príncipe, and his unabashed romanticism bubbling to the surface. As he stood on the deck, faint rosy glimmers in the east stole through the mist, and sought and kissed the gleaming water; and strengthening and growing slowly drew back the curtain of the night from the verdant island of Principe. And as the light brightened the sea became sapphire blue over the rocks, and turquoise in the sandy shallows, while here and there beneath grey precipitous cliffs it lay in pools of deep translucent green that seemed too radiant for mortal eyes to look upon. Beyond this, and as white as silk, the tiny breakers foamed against the line of yellow sand where careless cocoa palms flung up their sloping stems and tossed their plumes in the fresh morning air. Behind were grey rocks, half clothed in tender verdure, and dense masses of tropical vegetation, relieved by the light brown stems of the forest trees. Further still, and higher, the vast dome of Papagaio stood out against the pale blue sky, veiling one purple side in diaphanous clouds that rolled and rose like incense to the mountain gods. At seventy-one square miles, the tiny island was a mere “speck on the map,” oneseventh the size of São Tomé, though similar in geography and climate. Burtt’s contact on Príncipe was B. W. E. Bull, “a coloured man” who managed the island ’s telegraph station. Burtt thought him a “capital fellow” and assured William Cadbury that he “knows everybody here, from the governor downwards, and everything about the island. He mixes on equal terms with all the planters, and is a capable, manly fellow.” It was a high compliment in an age when many were uncertain—Burtt often but not always among them—that a “coloured Sleeping Sickness and Slavery   man” could be capable and manly. Bull’s house in the capital, Santo António, functioned as a sort of club for the town’s residents. He also owned a small roça on the island and, like Francisco Marin on São Tomé, he was multilingual: he spoke Portuguese, Spanish, English, and French, though no African languages.1 The morning after Burtt arrived, Bull took his guest to meet Príncipe’s governor—unnamed in Burtt’s letters—an “agreeable . . . intelligent man . . . keenly alive to the interests of the island.” But Burtt was disappointed by the town of Santo António, which was desolate, with “tumbled down wooden Fi g u r e 1 3 . Príncipe—view of the bay and city. By permission of the João Loureiro Postcard Collection.   C h o c o l a t e I s l a n d s houses and deserted buildings and churches.” It had enjoyed a century-long heyday, long past by the time Burtt visited in September 1905. In 1753, Portuguese officials had left São Tomé City and relocated to Santo António after a series of rebellions led by landed forros and supported by the câmara, the municipal council. Príncipe had no câmara; the island was the “private fiefdom of the Carneiro family by grant of the Portuguese crown in 1502.” There was thus no local elite with the power to oust Portuguese governors, as had happened regularly on São Tomé. The Carneiros were compensated for their loss of power with a large estate in Portugal, though they also maintained extensive landholdings on Príncipe. In 1852, the Portuguese moved the capital back to São Tomé and in 1858 began the process of recolonization, prompted in part by the promise of coffee and cocoa.2 The factor that most shaped Príncipe’s history, from the mid-nineteenth century forward, was a disease: sleeping sickness, carried by the tsetse fly (Glossina palpalis). It likely accompanied shipments of cattle, which were “brought over in small, shallow-bottomed boats” from nearby Gabon beginning in the 1820s. The disease spread slowly across the island from north to south, and few cases were recorded before 1890. In the early 1890s, Angolan serviçais recruited in Cazengo, where sleeping sickness was endemic, also began working on the island, and some may have arrived already infected. Sleeping sickness devastated the local population, even as many refused to believe that their symptoms were caused by...