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'At São Tomé, the modern sugar plantation was born. Large-scale sugar production had already been introduced in the Canaries and Madeira, but the São Tomé plantations were even bigger and more industrial in their highly specialized tasks for workers. Most significantly, they were the first to rely entirely on African slave labor. On São Tomé, the transformation of sugar into a mass commodity went hand in hand with the chattelization of African women and men. Here was the model for the New World.'
