Two-island nation in the Gulf of Guinea, uninhabited until Portuguese discovery in 1470 and a Portuguese sugar and cocoa colony until independence in 1975.
Survives as one of Africa's smallest and least populous states; ruled as a one-party socialist state until 1990, it has since remained one of the continent's more stable multiparty democracies.
A political history of São Tomé and Príncipe covering colonialism, the single-party period, and the transition to democracy.
Broad context on Portugal's African colonies and the anti-colonial liberation movements of the 1970s that shaped São Tomé's independence era.