Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery, and Colonial Africa

309 Pages·2012·4.94 MB·English

by  Catherine Higgs

William A. Cadbury, Joseph Burtt, and an unidentified African man in Luanda,
January agog. Photograph in the Cadbury Papers 308, Cadbury Research
Library, Special Collections, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.

Catherine Higgs

List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Glossary
Prologue Joseph Burtt and William Cadbury
One Cocoa Controversy
Two Chocolate Island
Three Sleeping Sickness and Slavery
Four Luanda and the Coast
Five The Slave Route
Six Mozambican Miners
Seven Cadbury, Burtt, and Portuguese Africa
Epilogue Cocoa and Slavery
A Note on Currency
A Note on Sources
Abbreviations in the Notes
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
FIGURES
Frontispiece. WilliamA. Cadbury, Joseph Burtt, and an unidentified African man
in Luanda, January lgog
i. William Adlington Cadbury, c.1910 15
2. Customs house bridge, Sao Tome City 27
3. The first baron of Agua Ize 29
4.Workers at a dependencia of Agua Ize rota, Sao Tome, early 1900s 31
5. Cocoa-drying tables 32
6. Two Sao Tomean women 35
7. Angolan servical couple, Sao Tome, c. 1907 38
8. Model housing for workers, Boa Entrada rota 40
9. Henry Woodd Nevinson in 1901 41
1o. Hospital on Agua Ize rota 44
11. Cape Verdean workers on Principe, c. 1907 49
12. Angolares' houses, Sao Tome, c. 1810 54
13. Principe-view of the bay and city 57
14. Santo Antonio, Principe 63
15.Luanda-partial view of the lower city and the African quarter, c. 1906 72
16. Afro-Portuguese elites, Benguela, c. 1905 77
IT D. Carlos I Hospital, Benguela, c. 1902 80
18. Boer (Afrikaner) transport riders, Mocamedes, c. 19o8 81
19. View of Catumbela, c. 1904 83
20. Governor-general's palace, Luanda, c. 19o6 93
21. View of Novo Redondo, c. 1904 95
22. Group of Africans and two Europeans at Benguela, c. 1905 97
23. Born Jesus fazenda on the Cuanza River, c. 19o4 108
24. Lourenco Marques, Mozambique 117
25. Alfredo Augusto Freire de Andrade, c. 19io 122
26. African miners, Witwatersrand, Transvaal Colony 126
27. Simmer and Jack Mine, Witwatersrand 127
28. Living quarters for Chinese miners 129
29. Informal housing for African miners, Johannesburg 130
30. Francisco Mantero in an undated photograph 140
31. Directors of Cadbury Brothers Limited, 1921 161
32. Joseph Burtt in the late 1920s 163
MAPS
1. Joseph Burtt's map of Sao Tome, 1905 34
2. Joseph Burtt's map of Principe, 1905 65
3. Angola, c. 1910 70
4. Joseph Burtt's map of his route from Benguela to Kavungu, 19o6 99
5. Colonial Africa, 1914 154
This book is about an Englishman's journey through Africa in the first
decade of the twentieth century, undertaken as European colonial powers were
tightening their grip on the continent. The traveler's name was Joseph Burtt. He
had been hired by William A. Cadbury on behalf of the British chocolate firm
Cadbury Brothers Limited to determine-in response to an emerging international
controversy-if slaves had harvested the cocoa the company was purchasing from
the Portuguese West African colony of Sao Tome and Principe.
Burtt's voyage took him from innocence and credulity to outrage and
activism. Between June 1905 and March 1907, he traveled to the islands of Sao
Tome and Principe, then south along the coast to the large Portuguese colony of
Angola, to Mozambique in Portuguese East Africa, and to the Transvaal Colony
in British southern Africa. Through his eyes, we learn about the often
complacent British and Portuguese attitudes toward work, slavery, race, and
imperialism in the early twentieth century. He visited agricultural estates-rotas
on Sao Tome and Principe and fazendas in Angola. He talked to diplomats,
journalists, and European and African businesspeople, and he traced the slave
route through Angola's interior. He conferred with mine owners in the Transvaal
and colonial officials in Mozambique, which supplied most of the labor for the
Transvaal's mines. He was not the first man to make such a trip; readers
interested in the broader literature into which this narrative of his experiences
fits may wish to read `A Note on Sources" at the end of this book.
Burtt wrote a stream of letters to Cadbury recording what he saw and whom
he met. He was not a flawless observer, but this should not surprise us, living as
we do in an age that has long abandoned the pretense of objectivity. What Burtt
wrote prompted Cadbury Brothers Limited to seek alternate sources of cocoa.
The report he prepared summarizing his observations was submitted to the