Sao Tome and Principe: Did you mean...?

São Tomé and Principe are islands located in the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa. They were uninhabited before being colonised by the Portuguese from 1486. So involved were they with the slave trade, they became known as the Slave Islands where...

Zheng Yi Sao (aka Ching Shih, Cheng I Sao, Ching Yih Saou or Mrs Cheng, d. 1844) was the chief of a massive pirate confederation which plundered the South China Sea in the early 19th century. She inherited the role from her late husband...

The 16th century São Sebastiao Fort, São Tomé, West Africa. The fort was built when the island was a Portuguese colony.

A 1665 map drawn by Johannes Vingboons of the island of São Tomé in the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa. The island was a Portuguese colony from c. 1486 to 1975. (National Archives of the Netherlands)

The Portuguese Empire was established from the 15th century and eventually stretched from the Americas to Japan. Very often a string of coastal trading centres with defensive fortifications, there were larger territorial colonies like Brazil...

Portuguese Angola in southwest Africa was the first European colony on that continent. While settlement from 1571 proved problematic in the interior, the Portuguese did obtain a large number of slaves which they shipped to their Atlantic...

The first plantations in the Americas of sugar cane, cocoa, tobacco, and cotton were maintained and harvested by African slaves controlled by European masters. When African slavery was largely abolished in the mid-1800s, the center of plantation...

A 1727 engraving showing a harbour on the island of Principe, West Africa. São Tomé and Principe were Portuguese colonies from c. 1486 to 1975.

In this article, we look at the lives and deeds of seven notorious women pirates. There is Teuta, the Balkan enemy of ancient Rome; Alwilda, the Scandinavian princess who chose a life of crime on the High Seas; Maria Lindsey, who terrorized...

Raising sugar cane could be a very profitable business, but producing refined sugar was a highly labour-intensive process. For this reason, European colonial settlers in Africa and the Americas used slaves on their plantations, almost all...