In São Tomé, a Portuguese island colony just off the sub-Saharan west coast of Africa, sporting institutions in general and football in particular developed from the end of the nineteenth century through the arrival of independence in 1975. An island plantation colony developed for export agriculture, indentured African contract labourers imported from the continent who worked on colonial plantations built São Tomé and by the first decades of the twentieth century comprised the majority of the population. The novelties of Western civilization, such as sport and other forms of leisure, arrived slowly in the colony, given the opposition of planters to any innovation in the collective life of their labour force. Only in the third quarter of the twentieth century, as the colony moved toward independence, did sport become an object of symbolic investment by the colonial power structure as well as a means of expression of identities and solidarities for groups engaged in struggles against the colonial regime.
Keywords: São Tomé, colonialism, nationalism, football, leisure and labour
