How British companies profited from slavery in Brazil for another 50 years after abolition 

by Mildred Europa Taylor, Face2FaceAfrica.com

The Transatlantic slave trade occurred during the 16th through the 19th centuries, causing the displacement of millions of Africans. The psychological, emotional, economic and social effects of slavery still ripple through African and American societies, affecting families on the continent and in the diaspora.

The bedrock of many industries, such as construction, trade, cultivation, child-rearing and the railroad business, to name a few, were fueled by the work of slaves.

Of the 9.5 million people captured in Africa and brought to the New World between the 16th and 19th centuries, nearly 4 million landed in Rio, Brazil, 10 times more than all those sent to the United States.

Slavery in Brazil was established during European colonization in the 1490s by the Portuguese. Despite Brazil’s independence from Portugal in the 1820s, slave-owner relations remained deeply entrenched in its social and economic fabric.

Indeed, calls for the abolition of slavery in Brazil began in the early nineteenth century. José Bonifácio Andrada e Silva, one of the figures behind Brazil’s independence from the Portuguese, wrote in favor of gradual emancipation as early as 1825. An article published by Brown University notes that Britain, which was Brazil’s primary trade partner and financier, saw to it that the slave trade was effectively abolished in 1850.

In fact, as far back as the year 1831, Brazil had already banned the trafficking of enslaved Africans following pressure from the UK. A law outlawing the practice was approved in 1828 to go into effect in 1831. That law was enforced for about five years before it was soon ignored by slave traders.

Merchants and politicians even came to view the law as “uma lei para ingles ver” [a law for the British to see], referring to doing something to appease the British, which was the country’s primary financier.

Historian Joseph Mulhern, in his book British Entanglement with Brazilian Slavery – Commerce, Credit and Complicity in Another Empire, c. 1822–1888, said the law couldn’t do much to stop the slave trade because British merchants in Brazil, by supplying goods and long-term credit, helped introduce a new group of traffickers who operated illegally.

Mulhern wrote in the book cited by the Guardian that British “officials in Brazil and their superiors in London were all too aware of the intricate connections between British commercial interests and the Brazilian slave trade.”

In 1850, when the trade effectively ended with a new law following pressure from the UK, about 750,000 Africans had already been illegally brought to Brazil since 1831, as reported by the Guardian.

Mulhern noted that British financial institutions continued to profit from slavery at the time, with enslaved people becoming “collateral assets” for loans and mortgages. 

Any time debtors defaulted, the banks held auctions to regain their capital, with one such infamous auction being held in Rio de Janeiro in 1878 (almost three decades after slavery should have ended), when a three-year-old boy, Pio, was separated from his mother.

In 1848 and 1849, a census supervised by Britain’s Foreign Office showed that there were 3,445 enslaved people held by British individuals and companies. Of the figure, more than half were owned by mining companies, including the British mining company St John d’El Rey.

In 1845 when British citizens and companies were legally barred from owning or buying enslaved people overseas, 385 captives were “transferred” to St John d’El Rey in Brazil. There was nothing actually illegal about the move because the 385 enslaved people were not sold but “rented”. This practice was allowed overseas under the 1843 Slave Trade Act.

Per the act, the 385 enslaved people should have been freed after 14 years, but that didn’t happen. The British ambassador to Brazil also refused to do anything about the case.

It took an additional 30 years for the 123 people who survived to be freed. Their freedom in 1879 was made possible by a Brazilian abolitionist who publicly revealed their plight. The rest died in captivity before 1879.

The above shows how British citizens and companies continued to profit from slavery for another 50 years after the UK Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.

“These connections [between the UK and Brazilian slavery] are very much overlooked,” Mulhern said.

According to Mulhern, Britons learn about the country’s involvement with slavery “almost as a self-congratulatory narrative”, as if the country had been a “self-appointed moral arbiter in the demise of the slave trade and slavery – despite the fact that the UK was one of the biggest countries involved in the slave trade.”

In fact, Brazilian abolitionist Joaquim Nabuco’s exposure of the story of the 385 enslaved people helped lead Brazil to abolish slavery on May 13, 1888, making it the last American nation to do so.