São Tomé and Príncipe - Blood and Chocolate in the Atlantic Ocean

In the Gulf of Guinea in central Africa, there are two islands in a chain of volcanic islands on the equator in the Atlantic Ocean known as São Tomé and Príncipe. 

These lush tropical islands were recorded as uninhabited at the time of the arrival of the Portuguese in 1470 and were subsequently used for large-scale plantation agriculture.

Land was cleared of dense tropical forest and thousands of slaves imported for labor, many of them from the Portuguese colony of Angola on the African mainland.