The Art of Running Away: Escapes and Flight Movements During the Great Depression in São Tomé e Príncipe, 1930–1936

Abstract As a coerced labour force living under repressive conditions, contract workers in São Tomé e Príncipe's cocoa plantations belong to wider phenomenon of global plantation experience during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Flight appears as an important element that this article is attempt interpret strategies runaways Tomé's turbulent Great Depression years after 1930. The work set out here benefitted from large selection unexplored sources island's inspectorate, which can be found archipelago itself. Its analysis has enabled interpretation motives escaping workers, with it discussion three principal strategic contexts flight: experiences who formed communities; attempts by escaped hide become part “native” (forro) communities rural areas or city Tomé; agency trying run away subsequently renegotiate their conditions inspectors administrators sympathetic situation. last locate history runaways, connecting types “ecosystems running” discussed for Atlantic slavery later indentured systems.