Slavery in Brazil
Encyclopedia
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
and for over six decades after the 1822 independence, slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
was a mainstay of the Brazilian economy
Economic history of Brazil
The economic history of Brazil covers various economic events and traces the changes in the Brazilian economy over the course of the history of Brazil. Portugal, which first colonized the area in the 16th century, enforced a colonial pact with Brazil, an imperial mercantile policy, which drove...
, especially in mining
Mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...
, cotton, and sugar cane production.
Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
obtained an estimated 35% of all enslaved Africans
African slave trade
Systems of servitude and slavery were common in many parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world. In some African societies, the enslaved people were also indentured servants and fully integrated; in others, they were treated much worse...
traded in the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
. More than 3 million Africans were sent to Brazil to work mainly on sugar cane plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
s from the 16th to the 19th century. Starting around 1550, the Portuguese began to trade enslaved Africans due to two main reasons:
- The unenculturatedEnculturationEnculturation is the process by which a person learns the requirements of the culture by which he or she is surrounded, and acquires values and behaviours that are appropriate or necessary in that culture. As part of this process, the influences which limit, direct, or shape the individual include...
indigenous peoples deteriorated rapidly, and became increasingly wary of the PortuguesePortugalPortugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, thus, obtaining new indigenous slaves was becoming harder and harder. - The Portuguese EmpirePortuguese EmpireThe Portuguese Empire , also known as the Portuguese Overseas Empire or the Portuguese Colonial Empire , was the first global empire in history...
, at the time, controlled some stages within the African slave tradeAfrican slave tradeSystems of servitude and slavery were common in many parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world. In some African societies, the enslaved people were also indentured servants and fully integrated; in others, they were treated much worse...
's commercial chain, thus, providing the Brazilian landholders with the opportunity to import slaves from Portuguese trading posts in Africa. Portuguese, Brazilian, and African slave traders managed to profit even more from the increased demand.
During the 15th century, after realising the extension and importance of slave trading for the African economy, the Kingdom of Portugal
Kingdom of Portugal
The Kingdom of Portugal was Portugal's general designation under the monarchy. The kingdom was located in the west of the Iberian Peninsula, Europe and existed from 1139 to 1910...
's soldiers, explorers and merchants involved themselves in the trade in black enslaved Africans along with other tradable items through the establishment of several coastal trading posts. Starting around 1550, the Portuguese began to trade African slaves to work the sugar plantations they were developing in their newly discovered colony of Brazil, once the European discoverers needed more human resources to use in the new continent, and the numbers of native indigenous peoples had declined. Although Portuguese Prime Minister Marquês de Pombal abolished slavery in mainland Portugal on February 12, 1761, slavery continued in Portugal's overseas colonies, particularly in Brazil, until its final abolition in 1888.
The enslaved Africans were useful for the sugar plantations in many ways. They were less vulnerable to tropical diseases. Slavery was practiced among all classes. From the late 18th century to the 1830s, including by the time of the Rebellions in Bahia
Male Revolt
The Malê Revolt is perhaps the most significant slave rebellion in Brazil. On a Sunday during Ramadan in January 1835, in the city of Salvador da Bahia, a small group of black slaves and freedmen, inspired by Muslim teachers, rose up against the government...
, slaves were owned by the upper and middle classes, by the poor, and even by other slaves.
The benefits of using the enslaved Africans far exceeded the costs to the owners. After 2–3 years, enslaved Africans repaid the cost of buying them, and slave plantation owners began to make profits from them. Brazil's plantation owners made lucrative profits per year. The very harsh manual labour of the sugar cane fields involved slaves using hoes to dig large trenches. They planted sugar cane in the trenches and then used their bare hands to spread manure.
A national survey conducted in 2000 by the Pastoral Land Commission, a Roman Catholic church group, estimated that there were more than 25,000 forced workers in Brazil. More than 1,000 slave-like laborers were freed from a sugar cane plantation in 2007 by the Brazilian Government.
Bandeira
From São PauloSão Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
the Bandeirantes
Bandeirantes
The bandeirantes were composed of Indians , caboclos , and some whites who were the captains of the Bandeiras. Members of the 16th–18th century South American slave-hunting expeditions called bandeiras...
, adventurers mostly of mixed Portuguese
Portuguese people
The Portuguese are a nation and ethnic group native to the country of Portugal, in the west of the Iberian peninsula of south-west Europe. Their language is Portuguese, and Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion....
and Indian
Indigenous peoples in Brazil
The Indigenous peoples in Brazil comprise a large number of distinct ethnic groups who inhabited the country prior to the European invasion around 1500...
ancestry, penetrated steadily westward in their search for Indian slaves. Along the Amazon river
Amazon River
The Amazon of South America is the second longest river in the world and by far the largest by waterflow with an average discharge greater than the next seven largest rivers combined...
and its major tributaries, repeated slaving raids and punitive attacks left their mark. One French traveller in the 1740s described hundreds of miles of river banks with no sign of human life and once-thriving villages that were devastated and empty. In 1628, Antônio Raposo Tavares
Antonio Raposo Tavares
António Raposo Tavares o Velho was a Portuguese colonial bandeirante who explored mainland eastern South America and claimed it for Portugal, extending the territory of the colony beyond the limits imposed by the treaty of Tordesillas...
led a bandeira, composed of 2,000 allied índios, "Indians", 900 mamelucos, "mestizo
Mestizo
Mestizo is a term traditionally used in Latin America, Philippines and Spain for people of mixed European and Native American heritage or descent...
s" and 69 white Paulistanos, to find precious metals and stones or to capture Indians for slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
or both. This expedition alone was responsible for the destruction of most of the Jesuit missions of Spanish Guairá and the enslavement of over 60,000 indigenous people. After such attacks, in some areas of the Amazon Basin
Amazon Basin
The Amazon Basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries that drains an area of about , or roughly 40 percent of South America. The basin is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Venezuela...
, particularly among the Guarani of southern Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
and Paraguay
Paraguay
Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...
, the Jesuit missionaries organized their missions
Jesuit Reductions
A Jesuit Reduction was a type of settlement for indigenous people in Latin America created by the Jesuit Order during the 17th and 18th centuries. In general, the strategy of the Spanish Empire was to gather native populations into centers called Indian Reductions , in order to Christianize, tax,...
along military lines to fight the slavers.
Quilombo (runaway slaves)
Escaped slaves formed MaroonMaroon (people)
Maroons were runaway slaves in the West Indies, Central America, South America, and North America, who formed independent settlements together...
communities which played an important role in the histories of other countries such as Suriname
History of Suriname
-Native American period:The history of Suriname dates from 3000 BC when Native Americans first inhabited the area. Present-day Suriname was the home to many distinct indigenous cultures. The largest tribes were the Arawaks, a nomadic coastal tribe that lived from hunting and fishing, and the Caribs...
, Puerto Rico
History of Puerto Rico
The history of Puerto Rico began with the settlement of the archipelago of Puerto Rico by the Ortoiroid people between 3000 and 2000 BC. Other tribes, such as the Saladoid and Arawak Indians, populated the island between 430 BC and 1000 AD. At the time of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New...
, Cuba
History of Cuba
The known history of Cuba, the largest of the Caribbean islands, predates Christopher Columbus' sighting of the island during his first voyage of discovery on 27 October 1492...
, and Jamaica
History of Jamaica
Jamaica, the 3rd largest Caribbean island, was inhabited by Arawak natives when it was first sighted by the 2nd voyage of Christopher Colombus on 5th May 1494. bob marley. christian. asmin. david...
. In Brazil the Maroon villages were called quilombo
Quilombo
A quilombo is a Brazilian hinterland settlement founded by people of African origin, Quilombolas, or Maroons. Most of the inhabitants of quilombos were escaped slaves and, in some cases, a minority of marginalised Portuguese, Brazilian aboriginals, Jews and Arabs, and/or other non-black,...
s and the most famous was Quilombo dos Palmares. In the mid to late 19th century, many Amerindians were enslaved to work on rubber
Rubber
Natural rubber, also called India rubber or caoutchouc, is an elastomer that was originally derived from latex, a milky colloid produced by some plants. The plants would be ‘tapped’, that is, an incision made into the bark of the tree and the sticky, milk colored latex sap collected and refined...
plantations.
Jean-Baptiste Debret
Jean-Baptiste DebretJean-Baptiste Debret
Jean-Baptiste Debret was a French painter, who produced many valuable lithographs depicting the people of Brazil.-Biography:...
, a French painter who was active in Brazil in the first decades of the 19th Century, started out with painting portraits of members of the Brazilian Imperial Family, but soon became concerned with the slavery of both blacks and the indigenous inhabitants. During the fifteen years Debret spent in Brazil, he not only concentrated on court rituals but the everyday life of slaves as well. His paintings on the subject (one of which appears on this page) helped draw attention to the subject in both Europe and Brazil itself.
Brazil, the world's largest sugar producer
The Clapham SectClapham Sect
The Clapham Sect or Clapham Saints were a group of influential like-minded Church of England social reformers based in Clapham, London at the beginning of the 19th century...
, although their religious and political influence was more active in the Spanish Latin America, were a group of evangelical
Evangelism
Evangelism refers to the practice of relaying information about a particular set of beliefs to others who do not hold those beliefs. The term is often used in reference to Christianity....
reformers that campaigned during much of the 19th century for the United Kingdom to use its influence and power to stop the traffic of slaves to Brazil. Besides moral qualms, the low cost of slave-produced Brazilian sugar meant that British colonies in the West Indies were unable to match the market prices of Brazilian sugar, and each Briton was consuming 16 pounds (7 kg) of sugar a year by the 19th century. This combination led to intensive pressure from the British government for Brazil to end this practice, which it did by steps over three decades. To this day, Brazil still is the world's largest sugar producer.
Steps towards freedom
Brazil achieved independence from Portugal in 1822Brazilian Declaration of Independence
The Brazilian Independence comprised a series of political events occurred in 1821–1823, most of which involved disputes between Brazil and Portugal regarding the call for independence presented by the Brazilian Kingdom...
. However, the complete collapse of colonial government took place from 1821-1824. José Bonifácio de Andrade e Silva
José Bonifácio de Andrade e Silva
José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva , was a Brazilian statesman, naturalist, professor and poet, born in Santos, São Paulo, then part of the Portuguese Empire. He was one of the most important mentors of Brazilian independence, and his actions were decisive for the success of Emperor Pedro I...
is credited as the "Father of Brazilian Independence". Around 1822, Representação to the Constituent Assembly was published arguing for an end to the slave trade and for the gradual emancipation of existing slaves. Further steps were taken on November 7, 1831, when a law banning the slave trade in Brazil was passed. However, since this point until the 1880s, the Brazilian demand for slaves was filled by a gigantic increase in the importation of African slaves. This massive importation of slaves was marked by a difference in the geographical location of Africa from which the new slaves came. Whereas before the nineteenth century, the majority of slaves in Brazil came from Central and East Africa, the majority in the mid 1800s came from West Africa. This is especially true of the Yoruba region, where the Oyo Kingdom existed.
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
continued on considerable level growing rapidly during the 19th century, and during this time the numbers reached as much as 60,000 slaves per year. Portugal and its territories in Africa had already stepped down from slave trade activities, but in other African coast's ports the slave trade continued. In Brazil, the foreign slave trade was finally abolished by 1850, and there were new laws on slave traffickers and speculators. Then, by 1871, the sons of the slaves were freed. In 1885, the slaves aged over 60 years were freed. The Paraguayan War
War of the Triple Alliance
The Paraguayan War , also known as War of the Triple Alliance , was a military conflict in South America fought from 1864 to 1870 between Paraguay and the Triple Alliance of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay...
contributed to end slavery, since slaves enlisted in exchange for freedom.
Brazil's 1877-78 Grande Seca (Great Drought) in the cotton-growing northeast, led to major turmoil, starvation, poverty and internal migration. As wealthy plantation holders rushed to sell their slaves in the south, popular resistance and resentment grew, inspiring numerous emancipation societies. They succeeded in banning slavery altogether in the province of Ceará
Ceará
Ceará is one of the 27 states of Brazil, located in the northeastern part of the country, on the Atlantic coast. It is currently the 8th largest Brazilian State by population and the 17th by area. It is also one of the main touristic destinations in Brazil. The state capital is the city of...
by 1884.
Princess Isabel
Slavery was legally ended nationwide on May 13 by the Lei ÁureaLei Áurea
The Lei Áurea , adopted on May 13, 1888, was the law that abolished slavery in Brazil.It was preceded by the Rio Branco Law of September 28, 1871 , which freed all children born to slave parents, and by the Saraiva-Cotegipe Law , of September 28, 1885, that freed slaves when they reached the age of...
("Golden Law") of 1888, by a legal act of Isabel, Princess Imperial of Brazil
Isabel, Princess Imperial of Brazil
Dona Isabel , nicknamed "the Redemptress", was the heiress presumptive to the throne of the Empire of Brazil, bearing the title of Princess Imperial....
. In fact, it was an institution in decline by this time (since the 1880s the country began to attract European immigrant labor instead). Brazil was the last nation in the Western world to abolish slavery.
Modern slavery
In 1995, 288 farmworkers were freed from what was officially described as slavery, a total which rose to 583 in 2000. In 2001, however, the Brazilian government freed more than 1,400 slave laborers. Some believe that most cases probably go undetected. A national survey conducted in 2000 by the Pastoral Land Commission, a Roman Catholic church group, estimated that there were more than 25,000 forced workers and slaves in Brazil.In 2004 the Brazilian government acknowledged to the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
that 25,000-40,000 Brazilians work under work conditions "analogous to slavery." The top anti-slavery official in Brasília
Brasília
Brasília is the capital city of Brazil. The name is commonly spelled Brasilia in English. The city and its District are located in the Central-West region of the country, along a plateau known as Planalto Central. It has a population of about 2,557,000 as of the 2008 IBGE estimate, making it the...
, nation's capital, estimates the number of modern slaves at 50,000. More than 1,000 slave laborers were freed from a sugar cane plantation in 2007 by the Brazilian government, in the largest anti-slavery raid in modern times in Brazil.
In 2008, the Brazilian government freed 4,634 slaves in 133 separate criminal cases at 255 different locations. Freed slaves received a total compensation of £2.4 million (equal to $4.8 million).
Further reading
- Klein, Herbert S. Klein and Francisco Vidal Luna, Slavery in Brazil (Cambridge University Press, 2010)