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The Decline and Fall of Slavery in Nineteenth Century Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Leslie Bethell
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Extract

It is in my case a particular honour to address the Royal Historical Society. As president of the Society for four years in the 1960s, Professor R. A. Humphreys, the first holder of the Chair of Latin American History in the University of London which I have been privileged to hold since 1986 (and, incidentally, my teacher both as an undergraduate and as a postgraduate student), gave a series of distinguished presidential addresses on aspects of British and United States policy towards Latin America, and Anglo-American rivalries in Latin America, during the nineteenth century. But it seems that I am the first historian of Latin America to present a paper to the Society on a specifically Latin American theme.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 1 , December 1991 , pp. 71 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1991

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References

1 Humphreys, R. A., ‘Anglo-American Rivalries and Spanish American Emancipation’, supra 5th Series, xvi (1966), 131–56Google Scholar; ‘Anglo-American Rivalries and the Venezuela Crisis of 1895’, supra, 5th Series, xvii (1967), 131–64Google Scholar; ‘Anglo-American Rivalries in Central America’, supra, 5th Series xviii (1968), 174–208Google Scholar—all three essays reprinted in Tradition and Revolt in Latin America (1969).

2 Bethell, Leslie, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade. Britain, Brazil and the Slave Trade Question, 1807–1869 (Cambridge, 1970), xiiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Mattoso, Kátia M. de Queirós, Être un esclave au Brésil, XVIe–XIXesiècles (Paris, 1979)Google Scholar; Eng. trans. To be a Slave in Brazil, 1550–1888 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1986)Google Scholar, with a foreword by Stuart Schwartz. For a survey of recent research, see Schwartz, Stuart B., ‘Recent Trends in the Study of Slavery in Brazil’, Luso-Brazilian Review XXV, no. 1 (1988), 1–25Google Scholar.

4 Conrad, Robert, The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, 1850–1888 (Berkeley, 1972)Google Scholar. See also da Costa, Emília Viotti, Da Senzala à Colônia (São Paulo, 1966; 2nd ed., 1982)Google Scholar, which remains by far the best overview by a Brazilian scholar.

5 See, in particular, Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (Ithaca, 1975)Google Scholar. Also Slavery and Human Progress (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar, part Three, Abolishing Slavery and Civilizing the World.

6 Blackburn, Robin, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 (1988)Google Scholar.

7 See, for example, on the province of Gerais, Minas, Filho, Amilcar Martins and Martins, Roberto B., ‘Slavery in a Non-export Economy: Nineteenth Century Minas Gerais Revisited’, Hispanic American Historical Review 63/3 (1983)Google Scholar and, on the province of de Janeiro, Rio, de Castro, Hebe Maria Mattos, Ao Sul da História. Lavradores Pobres na Crise do Trabalho Escravo (São Paulo, 1987)Google Scholar and ‘Beyond Masters and Slaves: Subsistence Agriculture as Survival Strategy in Brazil during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century’, Hispanic American Historical Review 68/3 (1988)Google Scholar.

8 On slavery in the city of Rio de Janeiro in the nineteenth century, see Karasch, Mary C., Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850 (Princeton, 1987)Google Scholar, and soares, Luis Carlos, Urban slavery in Nineteeth Century Rio de Janeiro, unpublished phD thesis, University of London, 1988Google Scholar.

9 Curtin, Philip D., The Atlantic Slave Trade. A Census (Madison, 1969)Google Scholar, chapter 8, remains the best study of the dimensions of the nineteenth century slave trade. For estimates of the illegal slave trade to Brazil after 1831, see Bethell, , Abolition, Appendix, 388–395Google Scholar and Eltis, David, ‘The Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade: An Annual Time Series of Imports into the Americas Broken Down by Region’, Hispanic American Historical Review 67/1 (1987)Google Scholar.

10 de Sousa, Paulino José Soares, Brazilian Foreign Minister, quoted in Bethell, , Abolition, 362Google Scholar.

11 de Carvalho, José Murilo. Teatro de Sombras. A Política Imperial (São Paulo, 1988), 61Google Scholar.

12 For a quantitative analysis of the decline of the total slave population in Brazil between the suppression of the slave trade (1850) and the final abolition of slavery (1888), and other demographic issues, see, in particular, Slenes, Robert W., The demography and economics of Brazilian slavery, 1850–88, unpublished PhD thesis, Stanford University, 1977Google Scholar; Merrick, T. and Graham, Douglas H., Population and Economic Development in Brazil, 1800 to the Present (Baltimore, 1979)Google Scholar, Chapter IV ‘Slaves and Slavery in the Demographic History of Nineteenth Century Brazil’; and Estudos Econômicos Vol. 17, No. 2 (1988)Google Scholar, special issue.

13 The Chamber of Deputies was elected, indirectly, on an extremely narrow franchise primarily determined by property and income. Senators were appointed by the Emperor for life.

14 See Dean, Warren, Rio Claro. A Brazilian Plantation System, 1820–1920 (Stanford, 1976), 129Google Scholar.

15 Carvalho, , Teatro de Sombras, 72Google Scholar; Mattoso, , To be a Slave in Brazil, 157Google Scholar.

16 See Lamounier, Maria Lúcia, Da Escravidão ao Trabalho Livre (A Lei de Locaçáo de Serviços de 1879) (Campinas, SP, 1988)Google Scholar and Gebara, Ademir, 0 mercado de trabalho livre no Brasil (1871–1888) (São Paulo, 1986)Google Scholar.

17 Eltis, David reminds us of this in Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Oxford, 1987), 235Google Scholar.

18 The classic work on early abolitionism in Brazil, written and published in London in 1883, is Joaquim Nabuco, 0 Abolicionismo (Eng. trans. by Conrad, Robert Edgar, Abolitionism: The Brazilian Anti-Slavery Struggle, Urbana, Ill., 1977)Google Scholar. On the abolitionist movement of the 1880s as a whole, see de Morais, Evaristo, A Campanha Abolicionisla (Rio de Janeiro, 1924)Google Scholar, Conrad, Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, especially Chapters 9 & 12, and the various writings of Emília Viotti da Costa.

19 The bill had more serious implications than might appear at first sight since in the slave registrations after 1871 many slaveowners had exaggerated the ages of their African born slaves in an attempt to establish that they had been legally imported before the law of 1831.

20 On the subject of white fears of onda negra, see in particular de Azevedo, Célia Maria Marinho, Onda negra, medo branco. 0 negro no imaginário das elites—seculo XIX (Rio de Janeiro, 1987)Google Scholar.

21 Holloway, Thomas H., Immigrants on the Land. Coffee and Society in São Paulo, 1886–1934 (Chapel Hill, 1980), 39–40Google Scholar.