Príncipe

Príncipe was uninhabited when the Portuguese reached it in 1471, and settlement began in about 1500 under a grant from the crown, with Santo António founded on its sheltered bay in 1502; its early economy, like its neighbour's, was sugar grown by enslaved Africans. The French destroyed the town and its fort in 1706, and from 1753 until 1852 Santo António was the capital of the whole colony, before that role returned to São Tomé town.

Sugar gave way, decisively, to cocoa: the archipelago's first cocoa plantation was founded at Sundy in 1822. In the nineteenth century the island was covered with roças — great estates with manor houses, chapels, hospitals, drying terraces and long ranges of workers' quarters — worked by contract labourers brought, often coercively, from Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde, and conditions on the islands' estates prompted a British chocolate-industry boycott in 1909.

Its best-known day came on 29 May 1919, when an expedition led by Arthur Eddington observed a total solar eclipse from the grounds of Roça Sundy; the measurements of starlight bending around the sun helped confirm Einstein's general theory of relativity and made the island's name familiar to physicists. After independence in 1975 the estates were nationalised and ran down, and the plantations have largely reverted to forest. Príncipe has had its own autonomous regional government since 1995, was declared a UNESCO biosphere reserve in 2012, and has since staked its future on low-volume, conservation-led tourism.

Príncipe's culture is that of a plantation society left largely to itself. Almost everyone lives in Santo António or in the old estate villages, and the roças are still communities — the families of former labourers occupying the workers' ranges and the outbuildings of the manor houses — so the island's history is not preserved behind glass but lived in. Portuguese is universal; the island's own creole, Lung'Ie, survives mainly among the elderly, with only a few hundred native speakers, and some islanders also speak Forro.

The calendar is Catholic and communal. Saints' day festivals in the town and the villages mix mass with processions, drumming, dancing and shared cooking; the island has its own dêxa beat, and the people of Santo António perform the Auto das Floripes, a play for which the town is known. Football is played on any level ground, often on the grass in front of a roça, and news travels by conversation rather than by media.

The pace is the island's defining characteristic, the leve leve of the country taken further: plans are approximate, transport departs when it is ready, and a visitor who insists on precision will get nowhere. Conservation has become part of local identity since the biosphere designation, with fishing, farming and forest use regulated in ways residents discuss closely, and guiding, portering and hospitality work at the roça lodges are now an important source of island incomes.

Around 8,400 people lived on Príncipe at the 2018 official estimate, a small fraction of the national population, most of them in Santo António and the villages of the north. The island has one main road, limited power and water supply, a small hospital, a few schools and no industry to speak of. Almost all manufactured goods, and much of the food that is not fish or grown locally, arrive by boat or plane from São Tomé, which makes prices high and shortages routine.

Fishing is the everyday livelihood, from wooden boats launched off the beaches, and the catch is sold the same morning. Around it are small-scale farming — banana, breadfruit, cassava, taro and fruit — and the cocoa grown on some of the old estates. Tourism, deliberately kept small in scale, is the growing employer, based on the roça lodges, guiding and boat work.

The day begins at first light with the boats and ends early; the equator keeps sunset near six all year. Santo António is busiest in the morning around the market and the government offices, and quiet by the afternoon. Young people leaving for São Tomé or Portugal, the cost and reliability of the sea and air link, and the condition of the roads and the power supply are the island's constant preoccupations.

Eating on Príncipe is almost entirely local, because little else is available. Fish is the foundation — grilled whole over charcoal with piri-piri, fried, or stewed with tomato, onion and palm oil — and the day's catch determines the menu, from small reef fish to larger ocean catches, and some is dried. Calulu is cooked here as on São Tomé: fish or meat simmered with palm oil, okra, tomato and leafy greens, and served with funge.

The starches come from the gardens and the forest: breadfruit boiled, fried or roasted; cooked banana in its many varieties; cassava, taro and matabala; and maize or cassava porridge served alongside the stew, with fried bananas a local speciality. Jackfruit, papaya, pineapple, avocado and safú, the fruit of the African pear tree, fill the market stalls, and coconut is used in cooking as well as drunk.

Cocoa, the crop on which the island's plantations were built, is still grown, and chocolate is made from the islands' beans. Palm wine, tapped from the trees and drunk the same day, is the customary drink at festivals and after work, alongside cacharamba, the local sugarcane rum, and fresh fruit juices. Meals are unhurried, cooked to order, and generally arrive when they arrive.