Editing History of Equatorial Guinea (section)

===Spanish colonial territory (1778–1968)===
[[File:África Ecuatorial Española.svg|thumb|left|Evolution of Spanish possessions and claims in the Gulf of Guinea (1778–1968).]]
[[File:(1897) Golfo de Guinea.jpg|thumb|Map of Spanish possessions in the [[Gulf of Guinea]] in 1897, before the [[Treaty of Paris (1900)]].]]
[[File:Eq Guinea 1900 ES.PNG|thumb|Borders after the agreement of 1900 on the land what would become Spanish Guinea (now [[Equatorial Guinea]]).]]
[[File:Stamp Spanish Guinea 1903 4c.jpg|150px|left|thumb|A 1903 stamp of Spanish Guinea]]
[[File:Corisco-Saliendo de misa-1910.jpg|thumb|[[Corisco]] in 1910.]]
{{Main|Spanish Guinea}}

At the beginning of the 20th century, the plantations of Fernando Po were largely in the hands of a black Creole elite, later known as [[Fernandino peoples|Fernandinos]]. The British had settled some 2,000 Sierra Leoneans and freed slaves during their brief control of the island in the early 19th century, and a small trickle of immigration from West Africa and the West Indies continued after the departure of the British. To this core of settlers were added Cubans, Filipinos, Spaniards of various colours deported for political or other crimes, and some assisted settlers. There was also a trickle of immigration from the neighbouring Portuguese islands: escaped slaves and prospective planters. Although a few of the Fernandinos were Catholic and Spanish-speaking, about nine-tenths of them were Protestant and English-speaking on the eve of the First World War, and [[pidgin English]] was the lingua franca of the island. The Sierra Leoneans were particularly well placed as planters while labour recruitment on the Windward coast continued, for they kept family and other connections there and could easily arrange labour supplies.

During [[World War I]], due to Spain's neutrality, Rio Muni and Fernando Po were host to large numbers of German troops and refugees who fled [[German Kamerun]] after the [[Kamerun campaign|Entente conquered the colony]]. They were well-treated by the Spanish authorities, largely because the 180-man militia was not large enough to forcibly intern them. Most of the Cameroonian natives stayed in Muni, while the Germans moved to Fernando Po.

From the opening years of the 20th century, the Fernandinos were put on the defensive by a new generation of Spanish immigrants. New land regulations in 1904–5 favoured Spaniards, and most of the big planters of later years arrived in the islands from Spain following these new regulations. The Liberian labour agreement of 1914 favoured wealthy men with ready access to the state, and the shift in labour supplies from Liberia to Rio Muni increased this advantage. In 1940, it was estimated that only 20 per cent of the colony's cocoa production remained in African hands, nearly all of it in the hands of Fernandinos.

The greatest constraint to economic development was a chronic shortage of labour. The indigenous [[Bubi people|Bubi]] population of [[Bioko]], pushed into the interior of the island and decimated by alcoholic addiction, venereal disease, smallpox and sleeping sickness, refused to work on plantations. Working their own small cocoa farms gave them a considerable degree of autonomy. Moreover, the Bubi were protected from the demands of the planters from the late 19th century by the Spanish [[Claretians|Claretian]] missionaries, who were very influential in the colony and eventually organised the Bubi into small mission theocracies reminiscent of the famous Jesuit [[Reducciones|Reductions]] of Paraguay. Catholic penetration was furthered by two small insurrections protesting the conscription of [[Forced labor|forced labour]] for the plantations, in 1898 and 1910, which led to the Bubi being disarmed in 1917 and left them dependent on the missionaries.<ref name="Clarence-Smith" />

Towards the end of the 19th century Spanish, Portuguese, German and Fernandino planters started developing large [[cacao plantation]]s.<ref>Clarence-Smith, William G. "African and European Cocoa Producers on Fernando Poo, 1880s to 1910s." ''Journal of African History 35'' (1994): 179–179.</ref> With the indigenous Bubi population decimated by disease and forced labour, the island's economy came to depend on imported agricultural contract workers. A Labour Treaty was signed with the Republic of [[Liberia]] in 1914, the transport of up to 15,000 workers was orchestrated by the German [[Woermann-Linie]].<ref>Sundiata, Ibrahim K. ''From slaving to neoslavery: the Bight of Biafra and Fernando Po in the era of abolition, 1827–1930''. Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1996.</ref> The Liberian labour supply was cut off in 1930 after an [[International Labour Organization]] (ILO) commission discovered that contract workers had "been recruited under conditions of criminal compulsion scarcely distinguishable from slave raiding and slave trading".<ref>"Slavery Conditions in Liberia", ''The Times'' 27 October 1930. http://www.opensourceguinea.org/2012/12/slavery-conditions-in-liberia-times-27.html</ref>

Between 1926 and 1959 Bioko and Rio Muni were united as the colony of [[Spanish Guinea]]. The economy was based on large [[Cocoa bean|cacao]] and [[coffee]] plantations and [[logging]] concessions, and the workforce was mostly made up of immigrant contract labourers from Liberia, [[Nigeria]], and [[Cameroon]].<ref name="opensourceguinea.org"/> Military campaigns were mounted to subdue the [[Fang people]] in the 1920s, at the time that Liberia was beginning to cut back on recruitment. There were garrisons of the colonial guard throughout the enclave by 1926, and the whole colony was considered 'pacified' by 1929.<ref>Nerín, Gustau. ''La última selva de España: antropófagos, misioneros y guardias civiles. Crónica de la conquista de los Fang de la Guinea Española, 1914–1930''. Catarata, 2010.</ref> However, Rio Muni had a small population, officially put at a little over 100,000 in the 1930s, and escape over the frontiers into Cameroon or Gabon was very easy. Moreover, the timber companies needed growing amounts of labour, and the spread of coffee cultivation offered an alternative means of paying taxes. Fernando Po thus continued to suffer from labour shortages. The French only briefly permitted recruitment in Cameroon, and the main source of labour came to be [[Igbo people|Igbo]] smuggled in canoes from [[Calabar]] and [[Oron, Nigeria]]. The persisting labour shortage in the cacao, coffee and logging industries was only overcome by the mushrooming illegal canoe-based smuggling of [[Igbo people|Igbo]] and [[Ibibio people|Ibibio]] workers from the Eastern Provinces of Nigeria. The number of clandestine contract workers on the island of Fernando Po grew to 20,000 in 1942.<ref name="opensourceguinea.org">Enrique Martino. "Clandestine Recruitment Networks in the Bight of Biafra: Fernando Pó’s Answer to the Labour Question, 1926–1945." ''International Review of Social History'', 57, pp. 39–72. http://www.opensourceguinea.org/2013/03/enrique-martino-clandestine-recruitment.html</ref> A labour treaty was signed in the same year, and a continuous stream of workers arrived in Spanish Guinea. It was this treaty which really permitted Fernando Po to become one of Africa's most productive agricultural areas after the Second World War.<ref name="Clarence-Smith" /> By 1968 there were almost 100,000 Nigerians in Spanish Guinea.<ref>Pélissier, René. ''Los Territorios Españoles De Africa''. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1964.</ref>