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 Epilogue Cocoa and Slavery The Portuguese translation of William Cadbury’s report appeared in Lisbon and Porto in January 1910 under the title Os Serviçaes de S. Thomé (The Servants of S. Thomé). In his preface, Cadbury noted that the July 1909 labor reforms had done little to alleviate his concerns. His earnest presentation of the facts as he saw them was less well received than he might have hoped. The editors of Portugal em Africa chided him for his pomposity and wondered how he expected to give lessons in humanity to the Portuguese while British mine owners in the Transvaal continued to abuse Mozambican workers. In the same journal, the Marquis of Vale Flôr defended Portugal’s humanitarian record. He also dismissed the photographs in the separate, limited-edition album Cadbury had circulated documenting his 1908–9 trip as fakes that could have been “taken in any part of the black Continent, even in London.” The photographs—of plantations, workers, serviçais aboard ship in their standard-issue striped cotton clothing, and porters carrying their loads—strike the modern viewer as far less contentious than the shackles and skulls that illustrated Henry Nevinson’s and Charles Swan’s books, and Joseph Burtt’s 1909 articles in Leslie’s Weekly.1 In Lisbon, the colonial minister asked Francisco Mantero to write a report in response to Cadbury. Manual Labour in S. Thomé and Príncipe appeared in English translation in August 1910. In many ways, it mirrored Cadbury’s book, with chapters devoted to working conditions on the islands and the recruitment of labor in Angola. A series of appendixes documented the planters’ correspondence with Cadbury and his meeting with them in Lisbon in November 1907. Unlike Cadbury, Mantero included photographs—of buildings, workers’ quarters, and hospital wards—meant to demonstrate the care afforded the islands ’ workers. Mantero’s tone was strained but not hostile. The campaign against São Tomé cocoa, he acknowledged, predated the interference by the Quakerchocolatefirms.ManteroclaimedtoadmireCadburyforvisitingLisbon;   C h o c o l a t e I s l a n d s traveling to the islands and to Angola; and attempting to harmonize the desires of the chocolate makers, the cocoa growers, and the Portuguese government. In his opinion, Cadbury had failed because he could not conciliate those interests in Britain that would only be satisfied by “the ruin of S. Thomé and also, perhaps the discredit of the English chocolate firms.”2 In London, Mantero’s attempt to redirect blame for the cocoa controversy away from Cadbury and thereby persuade him to abandon his boycott of São Toméan cocoa was met with skepticism. Manual Labour had been translated by John Wyllie, who had exchanged barbs with Henry Nevinson in the British press and followed Joseph Burtt to the United States in 1909 in an effort to discredit his speaking tour. Nevinson attacked the book, as did E. D. Morel as well as John Harris of the newly combined Anti-Slavery Society and Aborigines’ Protection Society. Their venom and their refusal to believe that any positive changes had been made in Portuguese Africa seemed to prove Mantero’s point. Their criticism also worried Edward Grey in the Foreign Office. He preferred to give the new Republican government in Lisbon, inaugurated in October, a chance to clear away the remnants of monarchical policies in the colonies.3 In November, at the invitation of a Portuguese government keen to set a new tone, Harris, Nevinson, and Charles Swan visited Lisbon, where they met with representatives of the new Portuguese Anti-Slavery Society. They were hosted by Alfredo da Silva, the reformer and antislavery activist who had translated Cadbury’s book into Portuguese. To Harris’s dismay, Silva portrayed the visit to Portuguese officials as an occasion to congratulate the government for its labor reforms in Africa, rather than as an investigation. When Harris wrote to Cadbury to protest Silva’s “double-dealing,” an angry Cadbury accused Harris of undermining, “in a flying visit of two days,” the dedicated Silva. Cadbury also refused to support Harris’s planned tour of Portuguese Africa.4 Burtt had accompanied Harris to Lisbon, but his loyalty to his former employer and friend was stronger than any affiliation to the British AntiSlavery Society. In July 1911, he dedicated The Voice of the Forest to Cadbury “in memory of his enduring work for freedom in West Africa.” In this romantic , fictionalized account of Burtt’s journey to São Tom...

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