Previously unrecorded São Tomé imprint

Pereira, Jonathas Rachel. Indice alphabetico de Legislação que diz respeito á provincia de S. Thomé e Principe até 1880.

€ 4,000.00

First and only edition. Previously undocumented record of legislation in the Portuguese Ultramar: an index of regulations passed in São Tomé e Principe by the Portuguese administration up to 1880, listing laws in alphabetical order by subject. Addresses the abolition of slavery in 1875, referencing a law passed on 29 April 1875 "declaring that former slaves are subject to public guardianship" (transl.). Subsequently, a system of contract workers (contratados) was introduced, with labourers from Angola, Cabo Verde, and Mozambique brought to work on the expanding coffee and cocoa plantations under conditions that were often still comparable to slavery.

The present index covers various matters of administration, politics, and economics, including regulations for the export of coffee and cocoa, education, penal code and justice system, parochial administration, missionaries, national press, postal service, public works, hospitals, cemeteries, banks and many more.

Printing began in São Tomé e Príncipe with the appearance of the "Boletim oficial" in 1857. Nineteenth-century imprints from São Tomé are very scarce, the present publication remaining entirely unrecorded in bibliographical or auction records. No library copies traceable worldwide.