Brazil and the Brazilian Slave Trade Between Two Global Swings, 1831-1850

• In Event: Imperial Policies and Politics: Continuing Debates in the History of Brazil

Abstract

The Brazilian law of November 7, 1831, which regulated the suppression of the transatlantic slave trade to Brazil, was one of the most influential legal landmarks on the social and political organization of the Brazilian monarchy in the 19th century. Yet the historiography has seen this law as a dead letter, as legislation that Parliament passed just for the sake of diplomatic convenience since the illegal transatlantic slave trade to Brazil continued until as late as 1850. Indeed, only recently have scholars started analyzing more closely the law’s ever-changing impact on decisive issues as diverse as the slave trade, diplomacy, partisan politics, slave agency and abolitionism. This paper will discuss the initial anti-slave trade goals at the core of the 1831 law. Then, it will consider the global and local forces that turned the law into a “dead letter” in the mid-1830s and define the law’s centrality to the formation of a consensus, if only temporary, on the slave trade in the national political arena.

Author

• Tâmis Parron