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São Tomé and Príncipe
The cocoa islands had no armed struggle of their own; after the Carnation Revolution, Portugal agreed with the MLSTP in Algiers in November 1974 and handed over sovereignty on 12 July 1975.
- Independence
- July 12, 1975
- Before
- Portuguese Overseas Province of São Tomé and Príncipe
- Metropole
- Portugal
- Leader
- Manuel Pinto da Costa
- Transition
- Negotiated
- Movement
- Movimento de Libertação de São Tomé e Príncipe (MLSTP), founded 1972 from the Comité de Libertação of 1960
Sugar, Slaves and Cocoa
The Portuguese found the islands uninhabited around 1470 and settled them from 1493, in part with deportees. Sugar worked by enslaved Africans made São Tomé Africa's leading sugar exporter in the mid-sixteenth century; when that trade collapsed the islands became a way-station of the Atlantic slave trade. Coffee and cocoa arrived in the early 1800s, and by 1908 São Tomé was the world's largest cocoa producer. The plantations, the roças, depended after the abolition of slavery in 1876 on contract labourers, the serviçais, shipped from Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde under conditions that reformers denounced as slavery by another name.
Batepá, 1953
The islands' own creole population, the forros, refused plantation labour. On 3 February 1953, after rumours that Governor Carlos Gorgulho meant to force them onto the roças, colonial forces and armed settlers killed hundreds of forros; twenty-eight suffocated in a police cell and twenty were burned to death on one estate. The Batepá massacre became the founding memory of São Toméan nationalism, commemorated each 3 February as Martyrs' Day. In 1960 Manuel Pinto da Costa and Miguel Trovoada founded the Comité de Libertação in exile, renamed the MLSTP in 1972.
Algiers and the Handover
The MLSTP never fought a guerrilla war; the islands were too small and too closely policed. Its opening came when the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974 toppled the Caetano regime in Lisbon. In November 1974 Portuguese representatives met the MLSTP in Algiers and agreed a transfer of sovereignty through a transitional government. On 12 July 1975 São Tomé and Príncipe became independent, with the MLSTP secretary-general Manuel Pinto da Costa as president and Trovoada as prime minister; the new state joined the United Nations on 16 September 1975.
Chronology
- 1493 — Portuguese settlement of São Tomé begins
- 1876 — Slavery abolished; contract labour system follows
- 1908 — São Tomé is the world's largest cocoa producer
- 3 February 1953 — Batepá massacre
- 1960 — Comité de Libertação de São Tomé e Príncipe founded in exile
- 1972 — Movement renamed MLSTP
- 25 April 1974 — Carnation Revolution in Portugal
- November 1974 — Algiers agreement between Portugal and the MLSTP
- 12 July 1975 — Independence; Pinto da Costa president
Aftermath
The MLSTP built a one-party state on Eastern European models. Pinto da Costa abolished the post of prime minister in 1979 and had Trovoada imprisoned for twenty-one months before he went into exile in France. Economic decline pushed the regime to liberalise from 1985; a multiparty constitution was adopted in 1990 and in 1991, in elections judged free, Trovoada returned to win the presidency. Pinto da Costa himself came back as an elected president from 2011 to 2016. The islands, among the smallest states in Africa, have alternated coups of days' duration with peaceful transfers of power ever since.
Legacy
Independence for São Tomé and Príncipe was a by-product of Portugal's collapse in Africa rather than of a war on the islands, which made the new state one of the few Lusophone territories to leave empire without fighting and, from 1990, one of the earliest to embrace multiparty democracy.