Archeologists have identified a small African island off the continent’s western coast that “embodies the inception of the plantation economic system,” according to new research.

Controlled by European expats, the island of São Tomé — which sits in the Gulf of Guinea and 150 miles west of the country Gabon — reportedly “became the first plantation economy” and launched “a model exported to the New World where it developed and expanded.”

“Lack of research obscures the significance of this archipelago in the history of the Atlantic world and plantation slavery, the study of which has focused largely on the Caribbean and North and South America,” wrote German historians in their report, published this month in the journal Antiquity.

The land’s viability for sugarcane, the primary crop harvested by slave labor on the less than 400-square-mile island, was scouted as early as 1485.

By a decade later, it had become fully operational and robust sugarcane fields were first documented in 1506.

Initially, the island was perceived as both “remote and lethal,” suggesting that “early settlement was rarely voluntary” and consisted primarily of deported convicts and Jewish children from Portugal (São Tomé is Portuguese for Saint Thomas).

Eventually, the island was rethought to be advantageous for the crop trade as it was “a major nexus between Europe and Africa.”

Its first enslaved population came from the coastal African mainland.

“By 1517 production had taken off,” noted researchers from the University of Cologne, who studied the island’s Praia Melão sugar mill site, once active into the 1800s.

“By the 1530s, the island had become the largest producer of sugar, surpassing Madeira in supplying the European markets, but its economic dominance was short-lived.”

The island’s sugar quality became poor at a time when Brazil’s industry was soaring. Ultimately, São Tomé landowners moved their production to the South American hotspot.

“Extensive slave insurrections” in addition to “political instability” were also major causes in the demise of the island’s plantations.

“The European population on the island dwindled, while the Creole elite and free Black people strengthened their political and social power, controlling landownership and trade, namely in human beings destined for Brazilian and Caribbean plantations.”

The 15th-century sugar trade eventually evolved into the transport of cocoa and coffee by the 1800s in the Portuguese-controlled region, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.

“Independence was achieved in 1975, but democratic reforms were not instituted until the late 1980s. The country held its first free elections in 1991.”Today it is recognized as the Portuguese-speaking nation São Tomé and Principe, which includes the northeast, latter island.

Current exports are mainly gas turbines, cocoa beans, aircraft parts, iron products, and chocolate, the CIA reports of the county’s annually estimated $75 million market.