A 16th-century sugar estate on the tiny African island of São Tomé is the earliest known example of plantation slavery.
Plantation slavery may have originated on a tiny west African island at the equator, according to archaeologists who investigated a 16th-century sugar mill and estate.
This made São Tomé"the first plantation economy in the tropics based on sugar monoculture and slave labour, a model exported to the New World where it developed and expanded," the researchers wrote in a new study, published Monday in the journal Antiquity. In the new study, researchers — led by M. Dores Cruz, a historical anthropologist in the Department of African Studies at the University of Cologne in Germany, along with colleagues from the University of São Tomé e Príncipe — investigated Praia Melão, a newly identified estate on the island's northeastern coast that is the first of São Tomé's sugar mills to be analyzed with modern archaeological methods.
But São Tomé struggled to keep up with the demand for sugar, given the high humidity, fast-growing forests and slave rebellions. So the Portuguese moved many of their operations to Brazil in the early 17th century, taking the plantation operating model with them. Mills on São Tomé were reused or fell into disrepair by the 19th century.
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