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  • Chocolate on Trial: Slavery, Politics & the Ethics of Business
  • David Killingray (bio)
Chocolate on Trial: Slavery, Politics & the Ethics of Business, by Lowell J. Satre; pp. xi + 308. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005, $24.95.

During the first decade of the twentieth century, forced labour and slavery in tropical African colonies, with their accompanying brutalities and high levels of mortality, became [End Page 741] a major concern in Britain. African and Chinese labour in southern Africa, "red rubber" in the Congo Free State, and Portuguese exploitation of serviçais in Angola and the island colonies of São Tomé and Príncipe aroused the ire and engaged the energies of the two main humanitarian bodies, the Anti-Slavery Society and the Aborigines' Protection Society. The investigative journalism, reports, skilful use of the new popular press, and public campaigns by E. D. Morel, Roger Casement, Henry W. Nevinson, and John Harris, meant that colonial labour abuse became well known to the public. Nevinson's journey and enquiries in Angola, first reported in articles in Harper's Monthly Magazine, were soon published in a widely read book, A Modern Slavery (1906). Other eye-witness reports on Portuguese policy substantiated the accusation that Africans were enslaved as contract labour in Angola, some being shipped to São Tomé to work on cocoa plantations. Mortality was high and none of the labourers was repatriated, while their children remained in a servile state.

Lowell Satre's careful study is directed at this case of slave labour, focusing on the involvement of the Quaker chocolate manufacturer Cadbury, whose Birmingham factory, from 1901–08, was buying up to half its cocoa from the Gulf of Guinea islands. Although William Cadbury was aware of Portuguese use of plantation slave labour as early as 1901, and had been repeatedly and reliably given evidence of the excesses committed by the Portuguese, his firm continued to purchase cocoa produced in this way. Nevinson, whose writings served to promote public concern, pressed Cadbury to boycott São Tomé cocoa, as did Fox Bourne of the Aborigines' Protection Society. Cadbury refused, arguing that it was essential first to know the full facts, supported by names and details, while at the same time putting pressure on the Portuguese authorities to reform the system that was possible only while the company's commercial presence gave it an opportunity to exert influence. It is an old argument to justify morally questionable commercial dealings, and now as then it induces suspicion while leaving an unpleasant taste in the liberal mouth. The Foreign Office in London was also well informed on Portuguese slaving but chose not to act ("Leave it alone," minuted Salisbury in 1894), anxious not to disrupt relations with Lisbon while seeking to secure labour from Mozambique for the South African Rand. In all, it amounted to a questionable strategy by a prominent Quaker and humanitarian company, and to a tawdry and undignified policy pursued by a Liberal government, albeit a Liberal-imperialist one. Had the victims been white, immediate action would have been taken. Cadbury, who devoted much time to the question, seems at best to have been politically naïve, at worst two-faced in ensuring that his company secured the cocoa that it wanted until a more favourably priced source became available.

Not surprisingly, given the heat of British politics at the time, a Conservative London newspaper, The Standard, in September 1908, accused Cadbury of hypocrisy and indifference to slavery in São Tomé. Cadbury's Quaker sensitivities were aroused by this accusation of lack of integrity at a time when he was, belatedly, one might argue, involved in yet another West African fact-finding tour. He sued The Standard for libel. Earlier in the year the Aborigines' Protection Society had called for a boycott of São Tomé cocoa, and a year later Cadbury agreed to stop buying slave-produced cocoa. But this came many years after the abuses had been known. The trial, in Birmingham's main court, lasted several days, at the same time as a general election. Party political divisions were displayed in court with Edward Carson, a Conservative MP and arch Unionist, soon to be mired...

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