Disrupted Ecologies: Conflicting Repertoires of Colonial Rule in Early Twentieth-Century São Tomé

The first months of 1909 were troubled times in the equatorial Atlantic island of São Tomé. In mid-March, after a long controversy opposing British chocolate manufacturers and Portuguese cocoa planters, the firms Cadbury, Fry and Rowntree decided to boycott São Tomé’s “slave-grown cocoa”. To cope with the consequences of the embargo planters turned to the colonial government. Asking for the state’s assistance was a common practice. Even if the island’s economy had been driven by private investment, the state had always supported the plantations by regulating the market, facilitating access to land and, most significantly, by enforcing labor-recruiting policies. Estate owners were, once again, demanding Portuguese diplomacy to work on their behalf to legitimize plantation labor practices. But labor was not the only problem they had to face. In April, planters issued another call for help. This time they requested agronomic science to deal with an unknown disease that affected cocoa trees, which, according to them, “had already produced great economic damage”.