Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War

by Howard W. French

The surviving documentary evidence from this period is thin, but that record suggests as many as six hundred of the Jewish newcomers perished soon after their arrival on the island. The remainder, however, would form an important constituent of an entirely new and important social hybrid that emerged as a by-product of Portuguese-African contact in the early crucibles of the trade in gold and slaves: Creole culture.* This Jewish population seems to have played an important role in São Tomé’s innovations in sugar production, and in sugar’s subsequent commercialization in Europe. From an early date, Lisbon took care to supply African women for the pleasure and convenience of the settlers, and with an idea to breeding more colonists. Beyond that, Creole peoples, who were racially mixed and spoke new languages and dialects that derived from the blending of their varied origins, would play an essential role in the creation of the new, ocean-spanning civilization