Chocolate Islands
Cocoa, Slavery, and Colonial Africa
(Ohio University Press, 2012)
ART 366
In Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery, and Colonial Africa, Catherine Higgs traces the early-twentieth-century journey of the Englishman Joseph Burtt to the Portuguese colony of São Tomé and Príncipe—the chocolate islands—through Angola and Mozambique, and finally to British Southern Africa. Burtt had been hired by the chocolate firm Cadbury Brothers Limited to determine if the cocoa it was buying from the islands had been harvested by slave laborers forcibly recruited from Angola, an allegation that became one of the grand scandals of the early colonial era. Burtt spent six months on São Tomé and Príncipe and a year in Angola. His five-month march across Angola in 1906 took him from innocence and credulity to outrage and activism and ultimately helped change labor recruiting practices in colonial Africa.
This beautifully written and engaging travel narrative draws on collections in Portugal, the United Kingdom, and Africa to explore British and Portuguese attitudes toward work, slavery, race, and imperialism. In a story still familiar a century after Burtt’s sojourn, Chocolate Islands reveals the idealism, naivety, and racism that shaped attitudes toward Africa, even among those who sought to improve the conditions of its workers.
(Description Source: Ohio University Press)
Author
Catherine Higgs is a professor of History in the Department of History and Sociology at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus. She earned her PhD in modern African history at Yale University. Her scholarship has focused on the intersections of religion, politics, labour, and activism; her approach is interdisciplinary and transnational. She is the author of The Ghost of Equality: The Public Lives of D. D. T. Jabavu of South Africa, 1885-1959 (Ohio University Press, 1997), and Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery and Colonial Africa (Ohio University Press, 2012). She is co-editor of Stepping Forward: Black Women in Africa and the Americas (Ohio University Press, 2002), and In India and East Africa/E-Indiya Nase East Africa: A Travelogue in IsiXhosa and English (University of the Witwatersrand Press, 2020). She is completing a book about the anti-apartheid activism of Catholic sisters in South Africa, which considers whether and how small actions can shift national policy.
Her research has been funded by the National Humanities Center, the American Philosophical Society, the Luso-American Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Before joining the University of British Columbia, she taught at the University of Tennessee, the University of Nebraska at Kearney, and at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. She teaches about Africa, Southern Africa, and the Atlantic World; newer courses focus on commodities, markets, labour and public policy, including China’s investment in Africa.
UBC Library Holdings
How to Purchase this Book
From the Publisher – Ohio University Press
From Used-book Sellers – ABE, Amazon, Antiqbook, Biblio, Vialibri
Paper ISBN: 9780821420744
Hardcover ISBN: 9780821420065
Electronic ISBN: 9780821444221
UBC Okanagan Classroom Artwork Project
The University of British Columbia Okanagan Classroom Artwork Project aims to display academically inspiring artwork in classrooms and other teaching areas of the university.
Artwork displayed as part of this project – including the covers of books and journals containing work written or edited by UBCO scholars and researchers – is intended to help enliven university teaching spaces, educate classroom users about the connections between research and teaching, and introduce members of the broader public to some of the research and scholarship carried out at UBCO.
How to Submit Artwork
If you know of other book or journal covers, or other academically inspiring artwork that is connected to work carried out by UBCO artists, scholars or researchers and that is consistent with UBCO’s educational mission, please email your suggestions to classroom.artwork@ubc.ca.
The UBC Okanagan Classroom Artwork Project began in 2019 with support from the Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences. It is now a joint project of UBCO’s Faculties and the Office of the Provost.
Artwork and other images that are a part of this project are displayed solely for educational purposes.