A Claim to Equality: Free African Islanders and Contentious Sovereignty in São Tomé and Príncipe, 1780-1820
In 1812, the Portuguese governor of São Tomé and Príncipe sent an alarming letter to the metropole: ‘The black people of this island want white men to eat, drink, and sleep with them as if they were all the same, with no distinction between nobles and commoners, between the rich and the poor’. These dangerous ideas, the governor claimed, had been imported from abroad: ‘all of this comes from the principles of equality introduced here by the French during the Revolution.’
In this small archipelago on the West African Coast, Portuguese fears of a Santomean-led uprising had been around for decades. Far away from the metropole and greatly outnumbered by this free African population, colonial officials in São Tomé were convinced that islanders would eventually challenge Portuguese sovereignty and take over the archipelago. ‘We fear a repetition of what befell the island of Saint-Domingue only a few years ago’, wrote another Portuguese governor in 1796.
From the late 1780s to 1820, Santomeans had access to a wide range of information which was circulated to the islands by a multiplicity of ‘outsiders’, from French merchants to Portuguese officials. Like other free people of colour across the Atlantic during the age of revolutions, the islanders reappropriated new ideas and resources in order to uphold their freedom. Conducting a historical ethnography of Santomeans, this presentation by João Moreira da Silva traces how the free African islanders mobilised a particular set of strategies – petitions, legal claims, and everyday forms of resistance – to pursue equality with Portuguese actors during this period. Drawing on this, it develops the concept of ‘contentious sovereignty’ to describe how a distinct model of imperial rule emerged in imperial peripheries such as São Tomé.
Practical
Date: 14 April 2026
Time: 16:00
Place: IISG, Cruquiusweg 31, Amsterdam
Entrance: Free admission, but please send an email to event@iisg.nl if you want to join.
Language: English
João Moreira da Silva is pursuing a PhD in History at the University of Cambridge. His doctoral project entitled "Colonising São Tomé and Príncipe: Disputed Sovereignties in the 19th Century". Placing his research in the intersections of legal, economic, and environmental history, he inquiries into the colonial occupation of São Tomé and the assemblage of a coffee and cocoa plantation system in the late nineteenth century. Drawing attention to the Santomean population who was dispossessed by the Portuguese colonial apparatus during this period and the violent processes of land-grabbing and deforestation, the aim of his project is to provide a history of São Tomé and Príncipe through a non-Eurocentric approach, as well as providing contributions to the global and environmental history of the Portuguese Empire.
Outside of academia, João is part of the organising committee for the museum exhibition "Deconstructing Colonialism, Decolonising the Imagination", and a member of the São Tomé and Príncipe Biennial of Arts and Culture. He writes articles about history and politics for different media platforms in Portugal.
