As a coerced labour force living under repressive conditions, contract workers in São Tomé e Príncipe's cocoa plantations belong to a wider phenomenon of global plantation experience during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Flight appears as an important element of that experience and this article is an attempt to interpret the strategies of runaways in São Tomé's turbulent Great Depression years after 1930. The work set out here benefitted from a large selection of unexplored sources of the island's labour inspectorate, which can be found in the archipelago itself. Its analysis has enabled interpretation of the motives of escaping workers, and with it discussion of three principal strategic contexts of flight: the experiences of runaways who formed communities; attempts by escaped workers to hide and become part of “native” (forro) communities in rural areas or in the city of São Tomé; and the agency of workers trying to run away to subsequently renegotiate their conditions with labour inspectors or with plantation administrators sympathetic to their situation. The last part of the article attempts to locate that experience in the global history of runaways, connecting it with the types of “ecosystems of running” discussed for Atlantic slavery and later indentured labour systems.

中文翻译：

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逃跑的艺术：1930-1936 年圣多美普林西比大萧条期间的逃生和逃跑运动

作为生活在压迫条件下的强迫劳动力，圣多美普林西比可可种植园的合同工属于 19 世纪和 20 世纪全球种植园经历的更广泛现象。逃跑似乎是那次经历的一个重要因素，本文试图解释 1930 年后圣多美动荡的大萧条中逃亡者的策略。这里开展的工作受益于该岛劳动监察机构的大量未开发资源，可以在群岛本身中找到。它的分析能够解释逃离工人的动机，并讨论三个主要的逃亡战略背景：形成社区的逃亡者的经历；逃跑的工人试图隐藏并成为农村地区或圣多美市“本地”（forro）社区的一部分；以及试图逃跑的工人机构，随后与劳动监察员或同情他们处境的种植园管理人员重新谈判他们的条件。文章的最后一部分试图在全球逃亡史中定位这种经历，将其与大西洋奴隶制和后来的契约劳工制度所讨论的“跑步生态系统”类型联系起来。