White gold, Black bodies: how a tiny African nation shaped

The first archaeological dig of São Tomé and Príncipe’s largest sugar mill sheds light on the birth of plantation agriculture and slavery as a racial system

Edsiley da Encarnação’s wooden stilt house stands mere steps from the ruins of an old sugar plantation on the African island of São Tomé. What remains of the 16th-century building, strategically built near a freshwater source and the sea, lies hidden among trees. Vines encircle stone walls.

“Everyone always says that people died there and that it’s haunted,” said Da Encarnação, 24, who studies business at the University of São Tomé and Príncipe. “There were slaves there, and so people believe that the colonists brutally killed the slaves and their spirits remained, wandering around the place.” Some neighbors avoid the site. Others visit to pick mangoes in the middle of the night from surrounding trees; youngsters sometimes prank the foragers, drifting through the grounds while dressed in ghostly white or black.