First-ever slavery plantation is discovered in Africa: Ruins of a nearly 500-year-old sugar mill and estate located on a tiny island to the west

Archaeologists have uncovered the earliest evidence of plantation slavery: the ruins of a 16th-century sugar mill and estate on a small West African island.

Named São Tomé, the island was the world’s largest producer of sugar in the 1530s and provided the blueprint for plantation economies across the Atlantic.

The ruins of the mill and estate were uncovered by researchers at the University of Cologne, who said the structure’s scale reflects the large enslaved labor force that worked in the main room where sugar was boiled.

The Portuguese settled in São Tomé in 1470 and became the largest producer of sugar by the 1530s thanks to enslaved Africans from the slave coast of West Africa, the Niger Delta, Fernando Po Island and later from Kongo and Angola.

“São Tomé was an important link between Europe and Africa,” the authors shared, “but lack of research obscures the significance of this archipelago in the history of the Atlantic world and plantation slavery.”

Unlike other Portuguese sugar mills in Europe that employed only enslaved people for manual labor, the West African location commissioned slaves to do everything from harvesting sugar cane to the carpentry and masonry work required to build the mills. to build and run. Living Science reports.

Located 150 miles west of Gabon in the Gulf of Guinea, São Tomé had a tropical climate, rich soil, and abundant fresh water and timber, making it ideal for sugar cane cultivation.

The first documentation of sugar cane fields on the island dates back to 1506 and production started in 1517.

The first plantation in the US was Shirley in Virginia, which was operational in 1638.

Investigators found charred walls in the room where sugar was boiled

The building is two stories high, rectangular in plan and divided into three areas

Enslaved Africans were brought to São Tomé and built the stone mill and estate that still stands today.

“The craftsmanship of the structure is obviously the product of enslaved builders,” say researchers.

Located 150 miles west of Gabon in the Gulf of Guinea, São Tomé had a tropical climate, rich soil, and abundant fresh water and timber, making it ideal for sugar cane cultivation.

“Particularly telling are the building’s windows, designed to allow a clear view of the work areas so that enslaved workers could be kept an eye on.”

The building is two stories high, rectangular in plan and divided into three areas.

There is a large room adjoining the head wall – a retaining wall that supported the mill race – and the tail race of the head wall housed the hydraulic mill or mills.

Investigators found fire-scorched walls in the next room, indicating that sugar was cooked here, and that the top floor was a living space.

The upstairs has wall cabinets, balconies and windows that allowed supervision of the work areas.

There is a large room adjoining the head wall – a retaining wall that supported the mill race – and the tail race of the head wall housed the hydraulic mill or mills.

“Parts of the building have collapsed and the floors are covered with rubble that may obscure additional features, but the remaining walls are between 5 and 9 meters high,” said the study published in Antiquity.

‘The living quarters on the upper floors are stuccoed, while the walls of the workspaces have a rough finish and graffiti with letters, crosses and other religious symbols.

‘As was common in contemporary Portuguese dwellings, the kitchen may have been outside, but neither these nor any slave quarters were inside.’

The mill remained in operation for about 400 years, but when slavery crossed the Atlantic, the sugar trade took it with it.

The island’s fame faded before the early seventeenth century due to the poor quality of its sugar, the rise of Brazilian manufacturing, and extensive slave revolts.

Political instability and the destruction of factories prompted large landowners to move to Brazil.

The island’s European population declined, while the Creole elite and free black population strengthened their political and social power and controlled land ownership and trade, particularly in people destined for Brazilian and Caribbean plantations.