The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade in 1850: Historiography, Slave Agency and

Statesmanship
Author(s): Jeffrey D. Needell
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Nov., 2001), pp. 681-711
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 33, 681-7I1

DOI: io.ioI7/Soo00222i6ioooo624

Cambridge Universlty Press

Printed in the United Kingdom

2001

68I

The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave

Trade in 185o: Historiography, Slave
Agency and Statesmanship*
JEFFREY

D. NEEDELL

Abstract. In 1970 Leslie Bethell argued that the Brazilian slave trade was ended
by British pressure. Since then others have pointed to slaveholders' fears of
insurrection and of yellow fever. This article addresses the issue by reviewing
Brazilian slavery, the African trade and yellow fever. Its analysis of sources and
context leads it to question revisionist arguments. Moreover, while it supports
Bethell on the centrality of British pressure, it goes beyond his appreciation of
internal Brazilian political affairs. It provides greater specificity, clarifying the key
importance of political history, the structure of state-society relations and the
significance of the Brazilian leadership of the time.
In I85o,

the Brazilian government

took the decision to implement
legislation which would put an end to the traffic in African slaves. In 1970,
Leslie Bethell, in a study focusing upon diplomatic and parliamentary
papers and periodical sources, posited that the decision resulted from a
combination of British pressure and the capacity of the contemporary
Brazilian cabinet to undertake such implementation.
Recently, both
United States and Brazilian scholars have suggested alternative explanations (without directly addressing Bethell's arguments). They have
argued that the Brazilian government's decision to repress the African
traffic derived from fears of Brazilian slave insurrection at a time of rapid
slave increase due to the traffic. They have also argued that the Brazilian
disease, specifically,
government responded to fears of slave-conveyed
yellow fever (which had returned to Brazil in 849, after a long absence).1
Jeffrey D. Needell is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the
University of Florida.
* All translations in the text and below are by the author. All
orthography in the citations
below is the original; modern Portuguese usage is maintained in the text and in text
in the notes below. Brazilian usage is followed with respect to names, although the full
name is used the first time the person appears in the text. This will mean that a person's
first given name or a combination of two names (given or family) may be used the
second or subsequent time the person is named in the text, depending upon the choices
contemporaries established for that person.
Leslie Bethell, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade: Britain, Brazil and the Slave Trade
Question: 80o7-1869 (Cambridge, 1972). Chief among the revisionists discussed are
Sidney Chalhoub, Visoes da liberdade:Uma histdriadas ultimas decadasde escravidaona corte

682

JeffreyD. Needell

This study casts considerable doubt upon the revisionists' arguments.

While it reaffirms Bethell's analysis, it also goes beyond it to focus upon
the issue of Brazilian politics and statesmanship. To do these things, the
study necessarily addresses several problems: the nature of Brazilian
slavery and the African slave trade; the nature of Brazilian slaves'
responses to their plight; and the Brazilian political context in which the
policy decision was taken.
I. Brazilian Slaveryand the Slave Trade, c. 78o-i8go
Origins

By the late eighteenth century, Brazilian-based, Portuguese merchants

took over the Portuguese trade in people between Africa and Brazil. Their
commerce was linked to expanding export agriculture in Brazil,
particularly sugar, in both old locales and new ones. Bahia maintained its
(Sao Paulo, i990), pp. i86-98; his 'The Politics of Disease Control: Yellow Fever and

Race in Nineteenth Century Rio de Janeiro', Journalof Latin AmericanStudies

[hereafter, JLAS], vol. 25, no. 8 (May 1993), pp. 44I-63; and his Cidadefebril: Cortifos
e epidemiasna corte imperial (Sao Paulo, 1996), pp. 68-78; Dale T. Graden, 'An Act

"Even of Public Security": Slave Resistance, Social Tensions, and the End of the

International Slave Trade to Brazil, I835-56',

Hispanic American Historical Review

[hereafter,HAHR], vol. 76, no.z (May 1996),pp. 249-82. See, also, Flavio dos Santos
de senTalasno Rio de JaneiroMocambos
e comunidades
Gomes, Histdriade quilombolas:
SeculoXIX (Rio de Janeiro, 1995),pp. 2 5-90; RobertW. Slenes,' "Malungu, ngamos
deSao Paulo,vol.
vem! ": Africacobertae descobertado Brasil', Revistada Universidade
12 (1991-92), pp. 48-67. Bethell's views were accepted for many years. See, e.g.,
Robert Conrad, The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery: I8o-I188

(Berkeley, 1972),

pp. 22-3; Luiz-Felipede Alencastro,'La traitenegriereet l'unitenationalebresilienne',

Revuefranfaisedhistoiredoutremer,vol. 66 (1969), pp. 395-419, especiallypp. 411-I7;
Jose Murilode Carvalho,Teatrodesombras:A politicaimperial(Rio de Janeiro,1988), pp.
52-6i; and Roderick J. Barman,Brazil: TheForgingof a Nation: 1798-1872 (Stanford,
1988), pp. 230-4; and his CitizenEmperor:PedroII andthe Makingof Brazil, i827-91
(Stanford, I999), pp. 124-5. Emilia Viotti da Costa had anticipated the conclusions of
Bethell's research in Da sengala a colonia, 2a. ed. (Sao Paulo, 1982 [I966]), pp. 22-7 and
repeatedher conclusions in TheBrazilianEmpire:MythsandHistories(Chicago, 1985),

pp. 13 -2. RichardGrahamalso anticipatedBethell's conclusions in his Britainandthe

Onset of Modernizationin Brazil: I8go-I914 (Cambridge, 1972 [1968]), pp. 164-6. David

Eltis amplifiedthe salientpoints in a concise review of the British evidence, although,

as shown below, he is decidedlydismissiveof the Braziliancabinet'sgood faith; see his
EconomicGrowthand the Ending of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1987), pp. 210-17.
The issue is skirtedin WarrenDean, Rio Claro:A BrazilianPlantationSystem,1820-1920
(Stanford, 1976), pp. 50, 54 and marginal in the classic by Stanley J. Stein, Vassouras,
A Brazilian Coffee County, ISf0-900o (Princeton, I985 [1958]), pp. 62-5. Mary C.

Karaschanticipatedthe revisionist position in an aside; see SlaveLife in Rio deJaneiro:

I808-I8Jo

(Princeton, 1987), p. 337. It should be noted that Alencastro, noted above,

also anticipatedthis position when he argued in favor of internalsecurityand yellow

fever as pressures acting in combination with British naval action (see 'La traite',
pp. 4 11- 3).

The Abolition of the BraZilian Slave Trade in i8fo

683

lead over Pernambuco until about the century's turn, then the captaincy
of Rio de Janeiro, particularly in the Campos area, displaced Bahia for
primacy. Northeastern slavers tended to favour buying people from West
Africa, southcentral slavers, people from west central Africa. The west
Africans bought tended to be warriors - prisoners of war. The west
central Africans were likely drawn from the male children of bought or
raided female agricultural workers in Angola. Most of the people were
adolescents, most were young males; the figures generally suggest a ratio
of two males to every female. In this, the figures resemble those for Saint
Domingue and for nineteenth-century Cuba.2
Regionaldistinctions
Perhaps the two Brazilian regions best studied for the period are Bahia
and Rio de Janeiro.3 Bahia employed most of its captives as gang labour
on cane farms or plantations; sugar-mill planters might employ a core
group of more than fifty, supplemented by dependent lands in which small
cane farmers employed smaller gangs. Thus, the total labour force
supplying each sugar mill averaged about Ioo people. The sugar area
remained the traditional one, the shores of the Bay of All Saints. The
several prominent, extended families most established in the area
continued to dominate, owning the best land and the most people.4
2

For the trade, regional issues, ethnicity, and demography,see Robert Edgar Conrad,
Worldof Sorrow:TheAfricanSlaveTradetoBrazil(Baton Rouge, 1986),chs. 2-6; Joseph
C. Miller, Way of Death: MerchantCapitalismand the AngolanSlave Trade:i730-I80o
(Madison, I988), chs. 4-5, pt. 3, and ch. i8, passim; Manolo Guerra Florentino, Em

costasnegras:Uma histdriada trdficoatlinticode escravosentrea Africa e o Rio de Janeiro

(Seculos XVIII e XIX) (Rio de Janeiro, 1995), chs. 3, 4; Eltis, Economic, pp. 150-7;
(MA
Mary Karasch, 'The Brazilian Slavers and the Illegal Slave Trade, I836-I85I'
thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1967), ch. z; Karasch, Slave, ch. i; B. J. Barickman, A

BahianCounterpoint:Sugar, Tobacco,Cassava,and Slaveryin the Reconcavo,

I78o-I86o

(Stanford, 1998), pp. 135-7; Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of
Bratilian Society: Bahia, Iljo-i83f (Cambridge, i985), pp. 340-53, 426-9, 437; Joao
Jose Reis, Slave Rebellionin Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 183j in Bahia, trans. A. Brakel
Slenes, "'Malungu",'
(Baltimore, I993 ), pp. I39-53; Gomes, Histdrias, pp. 202-19;
pp. 55-6 and ff.. For Saint Domingue, see, e.g., David Geggus, 'Sugar and Coffee
Cultivation in Saint Domingue and the Shaping of the Slave Labor Force', in I. Berlin
and P. Morgan (eds.), Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the
Americas, (Charlottesville VA, 1993), p. 78. On Cuba, see Robert L. Paquette, Sugar is
Made with Blood: The Conspiracyof La Escalera and the ConflictbetweenEmpires overSlavery
in Cuba (Middletown, CT, 1988), pp. 36-8, 59. Pernambuco, although behind Rio de
Janeiro and Bahia in production, remained an important market for buying people.
Indeed, previous estimates have been re-evaluated as far too conservative by Marcus
J. Maciel de Carvalho in his Liberdade: Rotinas e rupturasdo escravismono Recife, 1822-I18o
(Recife, I998), chs. 4, 5.
3 Nonetheless, Sao Paulo and Minas have been examined with increasing care and other
areas are beginning to benefit, as well. Here I profit from the generosity of Mary C.
Karasch, 'Bibliography [of Studies of Brazilian Slavery]' (MS. in author's possession).
4 Schwartz, Sugar, 445-53; Barickman, Bahian, pp. 146-7.

684

JeffreyD. Needell

Rio de Janeiro's sugars were initially produced in much smaller

plantations surrounding the Bay of Guanabara; the northern expansion
into Campos was in the seventeenth century, and Campos flourished only
in the late eighteenth. The fluminenseplantations were smaller, and so were
the number of people employed. In the late eighteenth century, with the
local expansion of sugar, particularly after the revolution in Saint
Domingue, production spread to the fluminensehighlands, within a day's
journey or so into the hinterland, towards the old mining area of Minas
Gerais. The first of these new sugar planters were generally merchants
from either Minas or Rio. These merchants were connected to the
flourishing trade between mineiroslave-produced crops and animals and
Rio, or they were involved in slaving and sugar exports and based in Rio's
port or its sugar-producing lowlands. Both groups shifted over to the
production of coffee as the market for this crop improved in the late
eighteenth century, and particularly the early nineteenth. (Again, the
Haitian revolution spurred this, as Saint Domingue had dominated coffee
production and its fall consequently made way for Brazil and Cuba).5
Eventually, coffee flourished along with sugar in the lowlands (except
in Campos, which, low and swampy, remained a sugar redoubt) and coffee
came to be the nation's leading export by the I83os. Its principal centre
remained in the highland river valley of the Paraiba do Sul. Plantations
were large, with a number often in the hands of one family head or, more
likely, a series of related family heads. The number of captives employed
on such plantations seems to have varied from 60 to twice that, although
some gangs were in the hundreds.6
5

Fluminenseis an adjective or noun referring to the province (now state) of Rio de

Janeiro; mineiro,to the Province (now state) of Minas Gerais. On the plantation

development, see Schwartz, Sugar, pp. 428, 444; Didima de Castro Peixoto, Historia
fluminense,za. ed. (Niter6i, I966), pp. 21-49, 70-3; Dauril Alden, Royal Governmentin
Colonial Brazil (Berkeley, I968), chs. z, 13, passim; Warren Dean, With Broadax and
Firebrand:TheDestruction
of theBrazilianAtlanticForest(Berkeley,1995), ch. 8, passim;

Lina Gorenstein Ferreirada Silva, Hereticose impuros:A Inquisifaoe os cristaosnovosno

Rio de Janeiro: Seculo XVIII

(Rio de Janeiro, i995), chs. I, 3; Joao Luis Ribeiro

naprafa mercantildo Rio de

Fragoso, Homensdegrossaaventura:Acumulafaoe hierarchia
Janeiro (179o-i8No) (Rio de Janeiro,

1992),

chs. 2-4; Florentino, Em costas, pp. 28-34,

I47-225, passim; Riva Gorenstein,'Comercio e politica', in LeniraMenezesMartinho

da Independincia
e Riva Gorenstein, Nogociantes
e caixeirosna sociedade
(Rio de Janeiro,
1993). On Haitian coffee plantations, see Geggus, 'Sugar', pp. 73, 76-7, 78, 80-4,
88-90, 93-5. On Cuban coffee, see Paquette, Sugar, pp. 52-3, who notes coffee
plantations still outnumbered sugar plantations until I846, although they were

declining from the I82os due to Braziliancompetition, a halving of world prices, an

unfavorableUnited Statestariff,and the rising cost of people due to competition from
Cuban sugar planters.
6 The general history of fluminense
coffee sketched here draws from O cafe no segundo
the pieces by Basfliode Magalhaes,
2 vols. (Rio de Janeiro, 1927) (particularly
centendrio,
Lyra Castro,Oliveira Viana, GeremasioDantas, Hildebrandode Magalhaes,Hon6rio

The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade in igSo

685

In both Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, the traffic in people increased

dramatically over this period, because of the expansion of coffee
cultivation into new areas, as well as the surge and then the maintenance
of sugar production in old ones. Since most of the people bought were
male, the disease environment
dangerous, and the work extremely
neither
natural
punishing,
reproduction nor longevity of the servile
was
sufficient
to
population
satisfy the expanding labour market. Hence
the growing demand for African trade. The figures suggest Brazilian sales

Silvestre,CarlosConceicaoand Afonso de E. Taunay);Affonso de E. Taunay,Pequena

histdria do cafe no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1943), ch. 2; Stein, Vassouras, chs. I, 2; Dean,
With Broadax, pp. 178-87; Alcir Lenharo, As tropas da moderafco: 0 abastecimentoda
Corte naformaiao politica do Brasil: 1808-1842, za. ed. (Rio de Janeiro, I991), pp. 49-50.

Perhapsthe earliesteyewitness account is FranciscoFreireAllemao, 'Memoria: Quaes

Sao as PrincipaesPlantasque Hoje Se-AchamAclimatadano Brazil?'RevistadoInstituto

Histdrico e GeogrdficoBrasileiro, [hereafter, RIHGB], t. 19 (I856), pp. 56I-7I. On the

impact on the fluminense African trade, see Florentino, Em costas, pp. 45-76, 85-9.
Florentino notes a shift in fluminense
sources from west Africa (I795-1811) to East
Africa (I8II-I830)
as secondary sources (although west Africa was historically

insignificantas a source, in sharp contrast to its links to northeasternBrazil).In west

centralAfrica, the shift in the same period was from the ports of Luandaand Benguela
(almost exclusively) to Cabinda,and others, as well as the traditionalcentralAngolan
sources. Florentino'sfigures (p. 75) show Rio's annualaverage by decade rising from
and 29,874
to 19,I2I (I8II-I820)
to 10,832 (I801-1810)
10,028 (179I-I800)
and from an average of 42.9% of all Brazilian slave imports to 69.2%
(I82I--830);

between the first and last decades noted (Florentino makes his comparisons to the
figures in Eltis, Economic).Actual figures for the coffee-plantationcaptives varied
tremendously,given the relativelyrapiddecline of coffee trees, the consequentshifting
nature of the economic frontier, and issues of varied land quality, individual wealth,
and each plantation'sdevelopment over time. The best figures may be in Florentino,
Em costas, pp. 28-35, although his figures are for 1790-1830, only, and thus reflect the
first surge of coffee planting. Gomes, Histdrias, pp. 203, 207, analysing twenty-two
Vassouras inventories for I837-I840, found an average of 63.8 captives per inventory,
with five averaging i80 and nine averaging I27. He writes of hundreds of captives on

nas
da escravidao
the larger plantations (p. 216). Pedro Carvalhode Mello, A economia

fazendas de cafe: i8fo-i888, z vols. (Rio de Janeiro, 1984), cites (pp. 330-2) much larger
figures - from 92 to 370 in a sample of nine plantations - derived from Coutv's 1888
observations. However, Carvalho de Mello's figures (p. 243) for the years I873-75,
based on bank mortgages using slave collateral, give us 324 plantations with 14,392
captives, an average of 44. Dean, Rio Claro, p. 34, gives us 'typical' plantation of i 86i

on the first, eastern Sao Paulo coffee frontier, with 71 captives. Hon6rio Hermeto
coffeefrontierwith 26 captives
CarneiroLeao began a coffeeplantationon thefluminense
in I836; in I854, he had 150 there (see Jornal do Commercio[hereafter, JC], 25 July 1897
[I854], in RIHGB, vol. 236 (July-Sept. 1957), pp. 279-8i. Eduardo Silva, Baroes e

escravista
escravidao:
e a criseda estrutura
(Rio de Janeiro, 1984),
Tresgerafoes
defagendeiros
p. I28, tells us that in I848 Francisco Peixoto de Lacerda Werneck left two plantations
and some 200 slaves to his son, who had three plantations in 1862, with 196, 136 and
71 slaves, respectively.

686

JeffreyD. Needell

of about I,ooo,ooo
people in the period I800-i85o,
era
the
of
contraband
trade, I83 I- 85 .7
during

with 700,000 sold

The contrabandtrade
The Rio and Salvador merchants involved in the slave trade from I780
to 1830 were generally of Portuguese birth, involved in other forms of
commerce, and dominant in the local market place in terms of capital,
investment and access to government favours. Upon making their
fortunes, they often married into local planter and Portuguese political
lineages (especially in Rio, to which the Portuguese court and thousands
of its dependents fled during the French invasion of Portugal in I807).
Few merchants' sons continued as merchants; the seigneurial status
associated with landholding and titles was the primary object of desire.
Many of them and their children were among the nobles and statesmen of
the First Reign; the most important families, particularly in thefluminense
area, were among the foremost crown servants and courtiers.8
After treaty obligations with Britain (I817, 1826) made African slaving
illegal in 183 , the established slavers apparently left the trade. The
merchants involved in the new, contraband trade were, again, drawn from
Portuguese merchants living in Brazil. Their firms often received heavy
outside investment and they were thought to be the wealthiest port
merchants in the Empire. British diplomats claimed they mixed with and
corrupted every imperial cabinet's ministers and influenced the new
monarchy's Parliament. Linkage between the older group of merchants or
related great planter families and these new contraband merchants is
difficult to establish, but lack of direct participation hardly signifies
economic or social segregation. It seems likely that anyone with capital to
invest could have backed these contrabandists, for the profits were rapid
and dramatic. The trade began in faltering fashion by 835; it picked up
dramatically in the next two years and was sustained at high levels
thereafter, with essential support from local English merchants (who
supplied key trade goods) and United States shipbuilders and seamen.
7Schwartz, Sugar, pp. 340-9, 422-8; Barickman, Bahian, pp. 136-7, 153-4; Florentino,
Em costas, pp. 30-5, 47-8, 5 I-9 (Florentino estimates 706, 870 for Rio de Janeiro alone
in 1790-i830); Stein, Vassouras, chs. 3, 6, 7, passim; Silvia Hunold Lara, Campos de
violincia: Escravos e senhoresna capitania do Rio de Janeiro: 70lo-o808 (Rio de Janeiro,
I988), ch. 6. My figures are from Eltis, Economic, pp. 243-4; cf. Bethell, Abolition,
pp. 391-5.
8 The political history of the Monarchy is divided into three periods: the First Reign,
the Regency, I83I-1840; and the Second Reign, 1840-1889. On the origins
I822-I831;
of the merchants and planting families, see Miller, Way, chs. 0-1 3, and Part 4; Ferreira
da Silva, Hereticos, chs. I, 3; Fragoso, Homens, chs. 2-4; Florentino, Em costas,
pp. 28-34, 147-225, passim; Gorenstein, 'Comercio e politica', in Menezes Martinho
e Gorenstein, Negociantes.

TheAbolitionof the BrazilianSlaveTradein I8jo

687

One historian correlates liberal administrations with pressure against the

trade and reactionary administrations with promotion of the trade. This
was true in the early 83os and in the Reaction of I837. For the most part,
however, the trade responded to the needs of the market, spurting
forward in the mid-i83os and growing dramatically under both
reactionary and liberal cabinets in the I84os.9
By 1849, despite the increased naval pressure of the British, the trade
was carried out openly in the major port cities, with entrepots on the
nearby coasts and a network of willing, corrupt public officials. The great
majority of the people sold were bought in Rio (as had been the case by
the i8zos). The volume was highest between 1837 and 1839 (in the
4o,ooos) and between I846 and 1849 (in the high 5o,ooos or low
6o,ooos).l?

II. Brazilian Slave Agency and Yellow Fever

The recent tendency to revise the history of slavery with respect to
conveying the actions of the slaves themselves in making their own
history, especially in terms of resistance, has had a decided impact on
Brazilian historiography. This approach itself was signalled as early as
Eric Williams' classic 1944 Caribbean study, but became generally
influential in the 1970s, with Genovese's 1979 study of slave rebellion and
revolution in the Americas. In the Brazilian historiography, this influence
is evident in any number of works.1l
In nearly all of the Brazilian studies the emphasis is explicitly on how
slaves responded to changing their circumstances through resistance,
negotiation, flight, and fugitive settlements. Many of them argue that fear
9 LawrenceF. Hill, 'The Abolition of the African Slave Trade to Brazil', HAHR, vol.
ii (I931),

pp. 179-89, 92-4; Karasch, 'Brazilian Slavers', pp. 4-7, 30-4, ch. 2, passim;

Conrad, World,chs.5, 6; Bethell, Abolition,pp. 75-9, 84-7. For the lists, cf. Karasch,

ibid., p. 21 and Florentino, Em costas, pp. 28I-4. The political linkage was alleged by

Conrad, World,pp. 8X-2, 85, 91, 92-3, 97-8. For the local significanceof the terms
'liberal' and 'reactionary', see part III of the text, below.
10 Conrad, World,p. Io9, ch. 5, passim;Karasch,'Brazilian', p. 9, ch.3. For the figures,
see Florentino, Em costas,pp. 5 -9 and Eltis, Economic,pp. 243-4.
u Eric
Williams, Capitalismand Slavery(Chapel Hill, 1944); Eugene Genovese, From
Rebellionto Revolution:Afro-AmericanSlaveRevoltsin the Makingof the ModernWorld
(Baton Rouge, 1979). On this trend in Brazilianstudies, see the magisterialreview by
StuartB. Schwartz,Slaves,Peasants,andRebels:Reconsidering
BrazilianSlavery(Urbana,
1992), ch. i, passim, especially pp. I4- 6. David Geggus, 'Slave Resistance Studies and

the Saint Domingue Slave Revolt: Some Preliminary Considerations', Florida

InternationalUniversity, Latin American and CaribbeanCenter, Occasional Papers
Series,no. 4 (Winter 1983). Stein's anticipationof the trend can be found in Vassouras,
ch. 6, passim.I am indebted to David P. Geggus for the referenceto Erik Williams'
pioneering work on resistance.

688

Jeffrey D. Needell

and panic were typical of the ongoing response of slaveholders. In the

more recent works, scholars have emphasised the impact of the 1835 Male
revolt in Salvador. Most prominently, Chalhoub and Graden have argued
that the fears among slaveholders produced by the 1835 revolt and by the
subsequent growth in slave numbers and slave resistance are central to the
decision of I85o. Santos Gomes has argued the same for ongoing
fluminensefear in his study of Rio de Janeiro's fugitive settlements and the
1838 plantation revolt in Vassouras; so also has Slenes.12 However, while
the recovery of slave resistance and the role of such resistance in Brazilian
history is both welcome and necessary, these authors' arguments
regarding the siaveholders' response in general and the repression of the
traffic in i85o in specific do not stand up to scrutiny.
Bahia and Rio de Janeiro
To discuss slave agency, some preliminary notice of Brazilian slavery in
general must be taken. Most scholars have studied either Rio de Janeiro
or Bahia, the two greatest entrepots of the Empire. Unhappily, no scholar
really handles both Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. Here, however, one can
draw upon these works to make significant distinctions and raise useful
questions.
The most obvious question is why Salvador and Bahia experienced
more violent resistance than Rio de Janeiro (port or province) - the first
three decades in the northern area are exceptional in Brazilian history for
constant violence and armed revolts. Schwartz notes some sixteen revolts,
leading up to the 183 5 rebellion in Salvador. Why was this so in Bahia and
not in Rio de Janeiro? There are no clear answers. Slave demography and
plantation crop do not explain it. In the case of the I835 revolt in
Salvador, for example, one notes that the city of Rio had more Africans,
both absolutely and relatively, and a greater proportion of slaves to free,
yet they did not revolt. Moreover, one cannot claim that Bahians pushed
their captives harder (and, thus, more often to the point of rebellion)
because of a rising export market. It seems clear, after all, that fluminense
masters pushed just as hard. The province of Rio de Janeiro was involved
in a rapid expansion of sugar simultaneously with Bahia, producing more
by century's end, and then was involved in the very harsh regime
associated with breaking into new lands to produce coffee. If the dynamic
of the work regime were the reason for Bahian revolts, one could thus
12 See
Schwartz, Slaves, pp. 14-i6,

and Sugar, pp. 474-88; Joao Jose Reis e Eduardo

Silva, Negociafao e conflito: A resistincia negra no Brasil escravista(Sao Paulo, 1989), chs.
4, 5, 6; Reis, Slave, ch. 3 and pt. 4, passim; Barickman, Bahian,pp. 77-8, X04; Chalhoub,
Visoes, pp. 187-9, I93-8; Graden, '"End",' pp. 256, 259-6o, 266-7, 275; Gomes,
Histdrias, chs. 5, 6; Slenes',"Malungu",'
pp. 6i, 65-7. The Male revolt and the
Vassouras revolt are discussed below in the text.

The Abolition of the Bragilian Slave Trade in i8fo

689

expect an even greater incidence of such violence among fluminenses.

Another question is why even Bahia, which most resembles contemporary
Cuba in its early nineteenth-century history of slave insurrection and
plotted insurrection, falls behind Cuba in the number, years, and success
of Cuban revolts.13
Comparative reading suggests two mutually-reinforcing solutions to
these questions. First, that in both Cuba and Bahia, the majority of
Africans taken into captivity were warriors, and warriors of similar
ethnicity, particularly Hausa and Yoruba. They might thus be more likely
to respond to opportunity and/or arbitrary oppression with organized
violence. In Rio de Janeiro, this would not be the case - the diversity of
origin was greater and the majority of captives were taken from the
agricultural, even servile, classes brought to the slave ports of west central
Africa.14 Second, that Brazilian slaveholding was relatively less oppressive
and maintained by proven practices of domination differing from the
more recent, less efficient slaveholding in Cuba. The Cubans had a
tradition of a white majority involved in small-scale farming, ranching,
and lumbering. Cuba's socio-economic shift after 1763, which made it a
major plantation site with an African and African-descent majority by the
i84os, represents a revolution. It was noted for its rapidly increasing
racism, absentee planters, and, one speculates, little experience with, or
patience for, the kind of negotiated moral economy Brazilian slaveholders
had worked out with their captives over three centuries.
Brazilian slaves traditionally had use of land of their own, regular time
to cultivate it, accepted cultural space, and the presence of a master
interested in maintaining such a paternalist moral economy in order to
ensure peace with (and the productivity of) the people among whom he
13 See Reis, Slave,pp. 5-6, ch. 3; Schwartz,Sugar,pp. 474-88; Karasch,Slave,pp. 8, 6i,
3z3-6. Karasch (p. 325) emphasises the relative ethnic diversity of Rio de Janeiro's
Africans compared to the preponderance of Yoruba and Hausa in Salvador. She also
(p. 326) notes the overwhelming reality of military power in the nation's capital. The
first point contrasts with the speculation hazarded in this study and in Reis, Slave. The
second seems less credible as a contrast to Salvador, which was well supplied with
military support for the status quo at the time (on the latter, see Reis, Slave, ch. 3,
passim). On the relative dynamism of the provincial economies, see, e.g., the Schwartz,
Barickman, Florentino and Lara references in n. 7, above. On Cuban slave violence, see
Paquette, Sugar, pp. 69-72.
14 On Bahian and Cuban ethnic and occupation origins, see Reis, Slave, ch. 8 and
Schwartz, Sugar, pp. 340-I; Paquette, Sugar, pp. 36-8. On the origins offluminense city
and provincial slaves, see Karasch, Slav,e,ch. I; Florentino, Em costas, pp. 85-9, 102-3;
Miller, Way, ch. 4; Gomes, Histdrias, pp. 202-I4; and Slenes, '"Malungu"', pp. 55-6.
Slenes and Gomes argue for the formation of a 'pan-Bantu' slave culture, unifying the
slaves despite their diverse origins among various Bantu speakers in west central
Africa, contradicting the logic of Karasch cited in n. 3, above. On the traditions and
assumptions of Brazilian slaveholding, see n. 16, below.

690

JeffreyD. Needell

lived. It is also noteworthy that slaveholding was not only a common,

traditional cultural experience among Brazilian planters, but also among
many, if not most, free Brazilians, most of whom were people of colour.
Planters and police chiefs could call upon dependents and other free
people, both white and (more likely) Afro-Brazilian who had a vested
interest in slavery personally or who treasured the distinction between
themselves and the Africans enslaved among them. Although slaves
might make common cause despite African ethnic distinctions, they also
might not, and race-based solidarity between estates (free and slave) was
the exception, not the rule. For example, in the 835 Salvador revolt, the
rebels were almost exclusively free and slave members of related Muslim
Yoruba and Hausa origin. The 1838 Vassouras rebels, however, were
slaves of various west central African origins. And in neither case were
creoles (black Brazilian-born slaves) or mulatto slaves involved. Indeed,
free and slave Afro-Brazilians were generally opposed to African rebels,
and, at times, were attacked by the rebels and aided in their repression.15
These are sharp differences with the Afro-Cuban experience. In the
early nineteenth century, Afro-Cubans were increasingly repressed, and
so were less likely to identify either with the slaveholding or hierarchy
dominated by the planters. One doubts they could have been as useful in
maintaining and defending the status quo. Moreover, we may borrow and
adapt insights and suggestions from David Geggus' review of the
importance of planter cohesion and a military presence in forestalling
armed revolt. Cuba, although a garrisoned state, may not have had the
kind of local, organised planter armed repression the Brazilians had
developed in the countryside. Brazilian planters were in place on their
plantations either the whole year or during a good part of it. They would
be more sensitive to the vagaries of oppression in the work regime and
social discipline of their holdings, and could calibrate appropriate
responses. Brazilian planters could and did organise among themselves at
any rumour of revolt. They were supported by national and local
15 On Cuban slaveholding and mentality, see Paquette, Sugar,pp.

5 -6, 64-9, 77-80,

IOI-3, 105-6, I I3-I 5, 18-I 9. Louis A Perez, Jr., Cuba: BetweenReform and Revolution
(New York, I988), pp. 6o-I, 63-5, 85-91, 96-103; Franklin W. Knight, Slave Society
in CubaDuringthe NineteenthCentury(Madison, I970), chs. 1-5, passim.On Brazilian
slaveholding, see Schwartz, Sugar, pp. 434-5, 438, 444, 449-53, 455-9, 462, 465-7,
473-4, 476-7; Reis and Silva, Negociafao, pp. 29, 40-3, 44-5, 47, 48-52, 66-8, 70, 88-9,
92-3, ch. 6, passim; Reis, Slave, chs. 8, 9 passim; Maciel de Carvalho, Liberdade, chs.
9-IO; Gomes, Histdrias, pp. 202-I9. In respect to these matters, the specific role of the

slave family is studied in Manolo Florentino and Jose Roberto G6es, A paz das
senZalas:Familiasescravase trdficoatldntico,Rio deJaneiro,c. 790-c.85ro (Rio de Janeiro,
1997), chs. I, 4, 6-8. (Cf. the role of racialand social distinctions in the noted urban
revolt in 1838 Bahia, the Sabinada:HendrikKraay,'"As Terrifyingas Unexpected":
The Bahian Sabinada, I837-I838',

HAHR,

vol. 72, no. 4 (Nov.

1992),

pp. 5I6-I7.

The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade in iSfo

691

governments run by kith and kin who were sensitive to the obvious
security issues. Although standing armies or garrisons along the lines of
Jamaica or Cuba were largely unavailable, municipal police, the National
Guard, and planters' thugs were thrown together quickly enough to
respond successfully on each and every occasion noted.16
All of these factors may explain why Africans in Brazil, for the most
part, favoured resistance, flight, and fugitive settlements, rather than the
fatal, armed and organised resistance of the west Africans in Cuba or in
early nineteenth-century Bahia. They had other, viable options, and they
generally chose them, rather than sure and capable repression. It will be
instructive here, however, to turn to the two most noted exceptions to this
rule, the 8 3 5 Male revolt in Salvador and the 8 38 Vassouras rebellion.
The i83j revoltand its impact
The Male revolt has enjoyed increased prominence in the historiography, doubtless because of its political appeal to the modern reader as
an organised, heroic revolt against the cruelties of an established
slaveholding regime. Nonetheless, Joao Jose Reis, who has given us our
best study of the revolt, presents archival findings that can be read against
his own celebratory analysis. Its contemporary and historical significance,
for example, is ambiguous. After all, it was a revolt involving relatively
few people (Ioo-6oo, and never at once) over the course of the early
morning hours of one day. It was rapidly and successfully repressed, with
about forty to seventy deaths among the rebels and about nine on the side
of their enemies. Additional research demonstrates that although there
was understandable concern among civilians and imperial officials both
locally and in Rio in the revolt's immediate aftermath, the officials'
precautions and repression allayed civilian fear and made any replay or
spread of the incident impossible. Panic seems to have occurred only
briefly; official response was measured, focused and successful. Report of
the incident was limited in Rio to a short notice in the major papers of
the day. There was no discussion in the Chamber of Deputies, and a cool
and comprehensive summing up of the incident and related repression in
the annual report of the minister of justice. At the time of the event and
occasionally in its aftermath, there was understandably cautious and
practical private and public official correspondence aimed at containment
and elimination of any possible source of recurrence and public anxiety.
16

David Geggus, 'The Enigma of Jamaicain the 1790s: New Light on the Causes of
Slave Rebellions', William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. Ser., vol. 44 (April I987),
pp. 274-99; for Braziliancomparisons,see pp. z75, 276, 277-8, 292, 295, 296-7, 299.
For Brazilian containment and repression, see, e.g., Schwartz, Sugar, pp. 472, 476-7,

480-8 or Maciel de Carvalho,Liberdade,chs. 9, io; and the evidence concerning the

context and containmentof the 1838 Vassourasrevolt, below.

692

JeffreyD. Needell

historians have relied upon to allege a

general, long-lived atmosphere of terror. There is, in effect, no reason to
generalise from such an understandable, limited contemporary response
that slaveholders and their government were moved to a state of enduring
panic or terror. Only two enduring results of the revolt are in evidence.
One was toughened legislation in response to slave violence in general.
Another was specific acts of repression and discrimination against the
people from the region from which the Males came. 'Minas', the
contemporary Brazilian term for west African captives (derived from the
African slaving port, El Mina), were decidedly unpopular outside of
It is this which some revisionist

Salvador after this and decidedly discriminated against within Salvador.17

Another alleged impact of the I 8 35 revolt is even more speculative, but
17

On the Male revolt, see Reis, Slave,chs. 4, I I, especiallypp. 90 if. On the response in
Rio de Janeiro,seeJC, io Feb. i835, extractingfrom the Diarioda Bahia's29 Jan. I835
reprintof the officialreportof FranciscoGoncalves Martins,Juiz de Direito and Chefe
de Policia (the main agent of the national government for local judicial and police
affairs)to the provincial president. The JC also cites a private letter. No further
mention of the revolt is made for the next week or so, and this in the most important
national periodical of the time. The ruling party's periodical, the moderate liberals'
AuroraFluminense,
had a comment on 16 Feb. 1835 by the chief moderados
propagandist
and orator,Evaristoda Veiga, noting the dangerposed by Africans,especiallyin Bahia,
and focusing on the specific African origin of the rebels. He goes on to attack the
contrabandslave trade, calling for the expulsion of Africanfreedmen,as well. Again,
as with the JC, there is no furthernotice. Parliamentwas out of session, normallythe
case during the southern hemisphere's tropical summer. A brief exchange in the
opening days of the chamberfocused upon the contrabandslave trade,an exchangein
which Goncalves Martins, elected a Bahian deputy, participates.Again, there is no
mention of the revolt; see Annaes do ParlamentoBrasileiro:Camarados Deputados
[hereafter,Annaes], 835, t. i, 6 May. Ironically,on the next day, 7 May, an amendment
to abolish slaveryin Brazilis voted down. Manoel Alves Branco,Relatorioda Repartifao
dei8s-,
naSessaoOrdinario
dosNegociosdaJustifaApresentada
a AssembleaGeralLegislative
de
Branco
Ministro
Alves
e
Manoel
Secretario
de
Estado
1835),
(Rio
Janeiro,
pelo Respectivo
pp. 7-I I. There was no debate on the revolt in the discussion of the ministry's budget,
where one might expect one if this were an issue (see Annaes, I835, t. 2, 22 July, 31

July). Thomas Flory, 'Race and Social Control in IndependentBrazil',JLAS, vol. 9,

no.

(1977), pp. 199-224,

presents no direct evidence for his claims regarding the link

between 835's revolt and the ebb of racialisedpolitical discourse. Reis, Slave,cites the
83 5 correspondenceof Goncalves Martinsand Alves Branco; indeed, his discussions
of repercussionsof the revolt is entirely local and notes fear and rumours in Bahia
through May only. Chalhoub, Visoes, pp. 187 ff., cites two memorandato Rio de
Janeiro's police chief, Eusebio de Queir6s Coutinho Matoso da Camara(see below)
from Alves Branco, and the consequent precautionsEusebio took. Gomes, Histdrias,
pp. 258-6o, cites the same and then more local police correspondenceon the fearsand
concernsthat extendedthrough December 835. Nonetheless, his canvassingprovides
only a dozen memoranda, generally relaying rumours and describing precautions.
There is no fear, there is no terror, there is no panic; these are measures to avoid
subalternviolence and allay anxiety voiced by a few nervous slaveholders. Graden,
'"End"', (pp. 257, 260) cites Reis and three 1835 memorandafor Bahiaand three for
Rio de Janeiro (I835,

I836, I849), and on these slender reeds constructs his edifice of

general, enduring anxiety and fear derived from the revolt.

The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade in i85o

693

addresses significant racial and political issues of the I83os. This concerns
the phenomenon of Haitianism, which was an apparent, latent source of
concern in the early nineteenth century. The term, derived from the
lessons taken from events in Saint Domingue, implied a conspiracy by
people of African origin or descent to overturn slavery and white
domination. It was a charge thrown at Afro-Brazilians or others who used
race as a device for political mobilization of the Afro-Brazilian and
African majority.
Flory has made the interesting argument that the reason for Haitianism's
diminishing political import after 835 derived from a kind of consensus
reached in the aftermath of the Salvador slave revolt among the politically
engaged not to play the race card in the fractious and bitter political
struggles of the time. Up until then, as he shows, the easy identification
between Afro-Brazilian and Brazilian had been used by nativists and
liberals in their attacks on the more conservative elements dominating the
State and the economy, elements either Portuguese by birth or by
appearance (i.e., white). Flory has suggested (without any direct evidence)
that the Salvador slave revolt showed that race should not be used
explicitly in political discourse for fear of stirring up too radical a
response. He demonstrates that the so-called mulatto journalism of the
early 83os disappeared after 835 . However, the implicit linkage between
lusophobia and the gente de cor (people of colour) remained a strong one
throughout the era and beyond. Still and this is the central pointalthough hatred of the Portuguese remained after the revolt, explicit
reference to a mulatto cause or to a conflation of Brazilian identity and
identity with people of African descent ebbed in journalism. Nonetheless,
an alternative explanation of this coincidence is obvious. One might more
convincingly argue that it was not the Salvador revolt, but, rather, the
general reactionary shift after I834 that led to such self-censorship. Flory
himself addresses this shift in discourse, but argues (again, without direct
evidence) that it was itself informed by the 835 slave insurrection. As we
shall see, however, there were any number of documented reasons for the
politically active to demobilise the mass of Brazilians bTy I835. One also
notes that although Haitianism and the mulatto press disappear from
public politics, some latent concern may have remained. We have the
tantalising incident in the early i84os, when one prominent (reactionary)
Afro-Brazilian related to an ally that rumours of his alleged Haitianism
were being used in an attempt to undermine his local candidacy as a
deputy from Minas Gerais. The attempt failed.18
18 Flory, 'Race', pp. 2z1, zi 5-I7 andpassim.Cf. Barman,Bragil,p. 37. The racialand class
aspectof lusophobiais best demonstratedin JeffreyCarlMosher, 'Pernambucoand the
Construction of the Brazilian Nation-State, 183 1-185o',

unpub. PhD diss., University

694 JeffreyD. Needell

The i838 revoltand its meaning
The Vassouras rising of I838 has had relatively little historiographical
play compared to the success of the Male revolt. Probably, this is due to
the Male revolt's more threatening nature as an explicitly radical, armed
attack on slave society in a major urban centre. The Vassouras incident
was quite different. It was a brief episode, involving about five hundred,
mostly west central African captives, who planned and carried out an
armed revolt on one plantation in order to flee into the forest and set up
a fugitive settlement. They were engaged in a brief skirmish with elements
of the local National Guard and planters' thugs; many surrendered
immediately, others returned to servitude gradually over the next week or
so. Fear and terror in the slaveholders' response - the claims at the heart
of Santos Gomes's analysis - are not characteristic even in a dispassionate
reading of the quotations he offers. In these, it is clear that the planters, at
worst, were angry and concerned with a breakdown in discipline on the
coffee frontier, and that they blamed the rebellion on the irresponsible
practices of one slaveholder. It is also clear in the documents that this
rebellion raised concern but did not induce panic or suggest a portent of
worse to come. The provincial president, Paulino Jose Soares de Sousa,
was a reactionary statesman who, if anything, tended to emphasise the
need for a strong state given the violence and disorder of the Brazilian
hinterland. Yet, even he, when he visited the area of the revolt, took its
measure after the skirmish and promptly returned to the provincial
capital, merely leaving precise instructions regarding careful analysis of
the revolt's origins. He quite clearly understood the situation to be under
control. The incident, one of perhaps eighteen catalogued by Santos
Gomes for the Province of Rio de Janeiro between 83 I and 850 (only
three of which went beyond plotting or rumour), apparently had no wider

of Florida, I996, ch. 4, and passim. Mosher documents the linkage into the 1840s. See,

ch. 9. Flory (p. 216) makesthe excellentpoint that

also, Macielde Carvalho,Liberdade,
the fear of Haitianismremaineda potent one until the 84os, citing the case of a failed
slur used to attempt the defeat of a mulatto candidate,Justiniano Jose da Rocha, in
I842. Among the documented phenomena which might easily have put an end to
explicitly racialpublic political mobilization during the I83os were the episodes and
ongoing threatsof violence with their decidedlyracialovertones in Rio de Janeiro(see
Barman, BraZil, pp. 37, I65, I70-I),

Recife (see the Mosher and Maciel de Carvalho

citationsabove), and in the social war of 1835- 841 in Pari (the Cabanagem),in which
the racialand politicalconflationof discourseand bloodshed was clear(see ArturCezar
FerreiraReis, Histdriado Ama7onas, 2a. ed. [Belo Horizonte, 1984], pp. I70-81 and
David Cleary, '"Lost Altogether to the Civilized World": Race and the Cabanagem
in Northern Brazil, 175o to 185o', Comparative
Studiesin SocietyandHistory,vol. 40, no.
i (Jan. I998), pp. 104-35).

TheAbolitionof the BragilianSlaveTradein s18o 695

impact whatsoever, besides a brief notice in Paulino's annual provincial
report.19

Ageny and Repression

It seems clear that the argument claiming a long-lasting milieu of panic
and fear caused by slave agency is unfounded. The evidence and solid
secondary literature make clear that, in Brazil, slaveholding was
widespread, traditional, and economically effective. Revolts were very few
and far between; slaves' agency was more typically limited to resistance,
flight, and fugitive settlements. Some of us may not care for this; some
may not find such responses to slavery heroic. Some may prefer the
repeated revolts in early nineteenth-century Bahia and the rising in 835.
However, one must reflect on the harsh realities. It can be argued that the
daily practice of survival in slavery has its own quality of heroism.
Certainly, it is a practice that often requires intelligence, endurance, and
any number of skills in an environment of great and varied danger. The
relatively few acts of armed, organised resistance in the early nineteenth
century were responded to with successful, violent repression, increased
vigilance, and measured constraint. They were failures for which the
rebels and other Africans paid a heavy price. The African and AfroBrazilian slaves, perhaps more cautious and shrewd, who could take
advantage of the idiosyncracies of the slaveholding society in which they
lived, can be thought to have done better. Their practices brought some
of them the success of survival - physically and culturally; they avoided
the desperate ventures that always brought the rebels castigation and
death. As Maciel de Carvalho puts it, in discussing why slaves did not take
advantage of a liberal political revolt in 1848 Recife, 'the slaves ... were
19 Gomes's research discovered eleven
fluminenseslave plots from

83 1 to 838; only one

(that which is discussed here) resulted in a revolt. Of seven between I844 and 850o,
only two resulted in (minor) revolts; see Gomes, Historias, pp. 255-80. Schwartz
(Sugar, pp. 479-88) gives an account of roughly fifteen plots and insurrections, mostly
on plantations, in Bahia between i809 and I837. Compare the numbers reported for
Cuba by Paquette, Sugar, pp. 7I-2. With respect to the research in the Province of Rio
de Janeiro, it should be noted that perhaps the most interesting possibility is suggested
by rumors of a province-wide, organized revolt, which inspired official reports and
directives in 1847 and I848. All we have seen of the alleged plot itself, however, is the
reports of the rumors and the calls for investigation cited. Gomes cites no results for
these proposed inquiries. Perhaps most significant is official concern, explicit in the
memoranda quoted by Gomes and Slenes, with investigating these matters in order to
allay fear and prevent panic. There is no reason so far to assume that the officials were
not successful. Finally, one notes Alencastro's argument that the I850 legislation was
partly driven by the historically unique concentration of slaves in Rio ('La traite',
p. 412) which 'did not fail to trouble the free population of the Court, the influence of
which on parliament was far from negligible', but his evidence for this is a single
newspaper report dating 4 Oct. x850, some three months after the debates ending the
trade.

696

JeffreyD. Needell

not ignorant of such French ideas - how could they be, after Haiti? But
no one was stupid enough to get involved all of a sudden. Some real hope
of winning was necessary. Everything indicates that they were not about
to jump into that fire'.20 Thus, daily heroism. Most often, the captives
resisted, and they and their oppressors negotiated a modus vivendi; when
this broke down or proved impossible, the captives fled.
Slaveholders, heirs of a secular cultural of domination, were cautious
and efficiently violent when necessary; they were hardly terrified or
panicked by their society. Whatever rhetoric of fear certain historians
have recently recovered from documents is atypical and generally springs
from the momentary shock and surprise arising from unexpected
incidents. In early nineteenth-century Brazil, the free were generally not
afraid of slaves; they were generally afraid of the lack of slaves. Indeed,
the clearest evidence of slaveholders' general success and complacency is
obvious - and never addressed by those who argue that the slaveholders
were increasingly panicked and terror-stricken. This is the striking fact
that free people in Brazil maintained and increased slavery during the
period in question; indeed, they bought more than a half of a million
people illegally to do so. It is also apposite to recall that Brazilian
slaveholders then employed their captives in every kind of task, from
shaving master, to nursing infants, to independent artisanal work, to
repressing other slaves, to field labour. Neither the volume of purchase
nor this ubiquitous character of Brazilian slaveholding support the
argument of a slaveholding majority living in great fear and anxiety.
Indeed, the great initial surge in contraband African slaving took place
precisely after the 835 slave revolt in Salvador and simultaneously with
the Vassouras slave revolt in 1838. Just how terrified and panicked could
the slaveholders have been?
The Yellow Fever Epidemic of i849-i8fo
If the case has been made above for dismissing rising fear or panic
regarding slave insurrection as a cause of the policy to abolish the African
trade, what, then, of the issue of yellow fever? After all, two of the
foremost revisionists, Chalhoub and Graden, have claimed that the
decision to end the slave trade also derived from a fear of an epidemic
largely blamed upon the African slaves. And there is no doubt that there
was a coincidence of a yellow fever epidemic in I849-I85o and the
decision to end the trade. Yellow fever, initially noted in Salvador, cut an
unexpected swath among people in Rio in December I849 and for five
months or more thereafter, affecting everyone, though apparently with
greater impact upon the Europeans and less upon Africans and the native
20 Maciel de Carvalho,Liberadade,
pp. zio- i; see, also, ch. Io.

The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade in I8to

697

born. It would revisit Brazil thereafter until it was eliminated in the early
twentieth century.21
Nonetheless, there is no good evidence that this epidemic influenced
the decision to end the slave trade. The revisionists' direct evidence is
sparse and weak. It is comprised of four parliamentary speeches, the
report of a provincial official, the medical arguments of a French
physician, and a diplomatic report of the impact of the epidemic on
abolitionist journalism. These are weak supports. The speeches of the four
parliamentary orators cited are, in and of themselves, of little weight.
After all, the policy decisions were taken by reactionary cabinet members;
the speeches were made by their liberal opponents over the course of
several months. Indeed, they were delivered after the cabinet had already
made its policy public. Politics, timing, and logic alike condemn the idea
that the cabinet was influenced by such words. As for the provincial
official report, it is merely circumstantial evidence; the historian who cites
it, Graden, shows no direct response to that report that would indicate it
had any effect on anyone. As for the French physician's influence, his
arguments, written in French medical journals over decades, have, indeed,
been shown by Chalhoub to have been taken into account by one of the
chief Brazilian physicians involved in policy making, Jose Pereira do Rego.
However, Chalhoub himself also shows that the Brazilian doubted the
Frenchman's conclusions, arguing that the epidemic was of relatively little
danger to the great mass of Brazilians or their African slaves.22
21

Chalhoub, 'Politics', pp. 446-51 ; Cidade, pp. 68-78; Graden, '"End"', pp. 272-3; cf.
Karasch, Slave, p. 337. On the epidemic, see the memoir of J. M. Pereira da Silva,
Memoriasdo meutempo, 2 vols. (Rio de Janeiro, I895), vol. i, pp. 2I4-I6. On the history
of yellow fever in Rio de Janeiro, see Chalhoub, Cidade, ch. 2; Sandra Lauderdale
Graham, House and the Street: The Domestic World of Servantsand Masters in NineteenthCentury Rio de Janeiro (Cambridge, 1988), ch. 5, especially pp. IIIff.; Jaime Larry
Benchimol, 'Pereira Passos - Um Haussmann tropical: As transformacoes urbanas na
cidade do Rio de Janeiro no inicio do seculo xx.', Unpub. MSc thesis, Universidade
Federal do Rio de Janeiro, I982, ch. 6; and his recent Dos micrdbiosaos mosquitos:Febre
amarela e a revolufaopasteuriana no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, i999); Donald B. Cooper,
'Brazil's Long Fight Against Epidemic Disease, I849-19 4. With Special Emphasis on
Yellow Fever', Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine,vol. 5i, no. 5 (May 1975),
pp. 672-96 and his 'Oswaldo Cruz and the Impact of Yellow Fever on Brazilian
History', The Bulletin of the Tulane UniversityMedical Faculty, vol. 26, no. I (Feb. I967),
PP. 49-52.
22 Graden, "'End",' pp. 272-3, relies largely upon Chalhoub, 'Politics', pp. 448-5I.
However, Chalhoub's evidence is better developed in Cidade. Accordingly, my list of
direct evidence derives from Cidade, pp. 71-8, passim. Most of Chalhoub's evidence is
circumstantial, speculative, and based on subsequent published sources. The speeches
were by Francisco de Paula Candido in April and June i850 and Angelo Ramos, again
in June I850. The provincial official was a Bahian, Joao Bernardo de Almeida,
published in March I850. The French physician was M.-F.-M. Audouard, and the
diplomat, the Englishman, James Hudson. Graden also cites the liberal senator Manuel
Alves Branco and the local chief of police, Sim6es da Silva. Discussion of Audouard's

698 JeffreyD. Needell

Finally, Chalhoub picks up Bethell's reference to the British diplomat,
James Hudson, who claimed the epidemic was put to good use in the
arguments of abolitionist journalists. Unlike Bethell, however, Chalhoub's
contextual analysis is wanting. Bethell makes clear that the diplomat in
question, the agent of the anti-slavetrade policy of the British, was hardly
impartial. His report was apparently designed to impress his superiors
with the success of his efforts to end the trade. Part of these efforts
involved the subsidy of the very abolitionist journalists making the claims
about yellow fever. What the diplomat stated was that the linkage
between the epidemic and slave imports was proving a strong instrument
in the arguments of the abolitionist periodicals. Yet, neither he nor
anyone else has demonstrated that these arguments were successful among
readers. Indeed, one would rather doubt it. The fact is that these
periodicals were ephemeral - some were dependent upon British subsidies for their survival. This suggests that the number of those reading
them, much less being persuaded by them, was small. In fact, Bethell
makes it clear that support for abolition of the trade was weak, a
fledgling movement.23 How is one to accept, then, that such 'public'
opinion would sway the cabinet which ended the slave trade?
III. Brazilian Politics, 1834-18yo
To speak of the cabinet and its actions is to pick up a thread leading to
the actors neglected among the revisionists: the elite policy makers.
Although Bethell discusses Brazilian statesmen and political history, all of
the revisionists' studies of slavery, the slave traffic, and the abolition of
that traffic ignore the political perspective and history of the elite.24 In

impact is in Chalhoub, Cidade,pp. 74-7 (cf. Graden, "End", p. 272, who apparently
misunderstandsChalhoub'sanalysis).Chalhoubtells us that Pereirado Rego believed
and published the opinion that the illness was more dangerous for newly arrived
Europeans than for either Africans or people of any ethnicity born or acclimatedin
Brazil.This conclusion would seem to undercutthe basicargumentthat Chalhoub(and
Graden)promote: that Brazilianstatesmenended the tradepartiallyout of fear of the
impact of recurrentepidemics. Indeed, Chalhoub reports that Pereira do Rego was
relativelyunconcernedabout the disease,given his findings. Note that Alencastro(' La
traite', p. 413) also argues for the importanceof yellow fever, but cites no primary
sources and errs in his claim that the fever affected 'whites and recent European
arrivals' most.
23 See Chalhoub,Cidade,
p. 73; and Bethell, Abolition, pp. 313-I4, 334 n. i.
24 Bethell, Abolition, chs. XI, 12,
especially pp. 292-3, 3 1-20, 328-46. Eltis, Economic,pp.
2I0-17, also analyses political and diplomatic motivations, although he argues (pp.

z26-17) for bad faith on the reactionaries'part, based entirely on British diplomatic
sources, which were understandablypartialto this perspective.As I show below, this

The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade in i8;o

699

effect, they place historical agency with the subaltern alone. Yet it is in
elite history, particularly as glimpsed in the history of politics and
ideology, that the slaveholders' perspective and the policy of the state
which promoted their interests must necessarily be understood. To
understand the reasons for the abolition of the African slave trade with
Brazil - a policy of the slaveholders' state, after all - one must review
the political history in which those reasons will logically make sense. Who
were the statesmen involved in I 85 o, and what was the nature of the state
that they had created?
Origins of the reactionary party

Let us begin with the surface, with the political narrative. The first
Brazilian emperor abdicated in I83 in the face of a violent, nativist,
liberal opposition which he could not contain. His heir was only five, so
a regency was established. It was a regime initially dominated by the
alliance of liberal elements who had opposed the emperor. The more
radical fraction of those forces was soon marginalized by the more
moderate, but the moderates could not ignore the radical and nativist
impulses which had brought the emperor's opposition so much popular
support. From I831 to 1834, moderates were torn between the more
radical mandate of the i82os and the need to maintain the unity of the
Empire and sustain its traditional social order. Attempts to both rewrite
and reform the Constitution of 1824, ongoing violence in Rio and the
other major port cities, rural guerrilla warfare with both subaltern
elements and local political chieftains, the threatened loss of the southernmost province through secession and the northern most province through
subaltern revolt - all of these shook the nation during the I83os. By
1834, the more conservative leaders of the moderate ruling party began a
process of reaction, winning over a faction of their party. Over 1835 and
1836, they also reached out to the elements once loyal to the first emperor,
powerful and wealthy people often similar to themselves in terms of social
status, economic interests, education, and a visceral monarchism.

opinion is contradictedby Braziliansourceswhich demonstrate,in their dating and the

actions they indicate, the sure intention on the reactionaries'part to eliminate the
justificationfor British intervention before the British increasedtheir violence. The
Brazilianswere not suddenlyseizedwith the moralconviction theirBritishcounterparts
displayed;they were, however, blessed with intelligence and strength enough to deal
successfullywith the threatof escalatingBritishintervention.As demonstratedabove,
the revisionistsmakeinterpretationsof very selective elite quotationswhen convenient
to their argument of a policy dictated by fear of slave insurrection. They offer no
adequateconsiderationof the political history or policy context. Their attention to the
British role is negligible or non-existent.

700

JeffreyD. Needell

Together, they put together a majority in the Chamber which formed the
basis for the reactionary party which first triumphed in 1837. This is the
origin of what was subsequently called the Conservative Party. Their
opposition varied in ideology and regional background, but it was
effectively forced into an alliance by the reactionaries' organization of a
majority and consequent rise to power. This alliance was the origin of
what was subsequently called the Liberal Party.25
Now, let us go a bit deeper. The socio-economic roots of the 1837
reactionary leadership werefluminenseand mineiro.They can be traced to an
alliance between the older merchant and sugar planter families and
political chieftains dominant in the First Reign and the newer mineiro
merchant and mineiro and fluminense coffee-planter families already
flourishing in the I83os. Almost all of the political leaders were linked to
merchant and sugar and coffee planter families by common interests,
descent, and marriage; many were planters themselves. Moreover, by
1837, this leadership had successfully allied itself with noted deputies
representing the great sugar families of Bahia and Pernambuco.26
The cabinetof Septemberi848
These reactionaries of I837 dominated the executive and legislative
branches of the monarchy from 1837 to 1839. From I839 to 1844, these

reactionaries dominated the parliament but had only intermittent control

25 The era
I83 -1837 has been poorly served by academics over the last generation or so.
Nonetheless, we have the magisterial political analysis of Barman, Brazil, ch. 6, and a
useful analysis of liberal politics in Thomas Flory, Judge and Jury in Imperial Brazil,
I8o8-i87i: Social Control and Political Stability in the New State (Austin, I98 ), pts. i, 2,
and ch. 8. A superb analysis derived from the traditional historiography can be found
in Sergio Buarque de Holanda, et al., in S. Buarque de Holanda, Histdria geral da
civiligafao brasileira, t. II, v. 2, livro i (Sao Paulo, I967). The traditional account of the
monarchy by Joaquim Nabuco is frustratingly brief for these years; see Um estadista
do imperio, 3 vols (Rio de Janeiro, 1897-99), vol. I, pp. 23-43. The destabilisation and
subaltern action has been recovered with increasing attention in several recent pieces.
See Kraay, '"As Terrifying",' Marcus Joaquim Maciel de Carvalho, 'Hegemony and
Rebellion in Pernambuco (Brazil), I82I-I835',
(Unpub. PhD diss., University of
Illinois, 1989), ch. 6; Mosher, 'Pernambuco', ch. i; Reis, Slave; Cleary, "'Lost
Altogether"'; and Matthias Rohrig Assuncao, 'Elite Politics and Popular Rebellion in
the Construction of Post-colonial Order. The Case of Maranhao, Brazil (1820-4)',
JLAS, vol. 31, no. i (Feb. 1999), pp. 1-38. Note in all of these the context of
continuous violence and threatened revolt in which the major outbreaks occurred.
Jeffrey D. Needell, 'Party Formation and Statemaking: The Conservative Party and the
Reconstruction of the Brazilian State, 183 I-840',
HAHR, vol. 82, no. 2, pt. 2, 2001
provides a specific analysis of political-party formation and its socio-economic context.
26 See
Jose Murilo de Carvalho, A construfaoda ordem: A elite politica imperial (Rio de
Janeiro, 1980), ch. 8, for a well-informed analysis of partisan bases and ideology over
the course of the monarchy. For greater historical specificity and focus with respect to
the issues at hand, see Needell, 'Party', pt. 2.

The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade in i/8o

701

of the cabinet. From I844 to 1848, their opposition, the Liberals,

dominated both the chamber and a series of successive, weak cabinets.
The very heterogeneity of the Liberals, and the vagaries of the young
emperor's interventions (or those of his favourite), made this era one of
great instability. This instability, mounting crises with the British and the
Argentines, and increasing local political violence compelled the Emperor
to turn to the reactionaries, known by now as the Party of Order. He
called them to form a cabinet in September i848.27
The cabinet was representative of the most prestigious and reactionary
elements in parliament and in society. It included Paulino Josd Soares de
Sousa as minister of foreign affairs. This was the same man noted above
as president of Rio de Janeiro during the Vassouras rebellion in I838.
Paulino was one of the party's two most important legislators, a former
minister, a longtime deputy, a new senator for Rio de Janeiro after 849,
and the husband of a woman sprung from a long established lowland
planting family. His brother-in-law, Joaquim Josd Rodrigues Torres, was
minister of finance. Rodrigues Torres was probably the most popular
statesman of Rio de Janeiro since the Regency; he was the son and brother
offluminensemerchants, a planter, the first president of Rio de Janeiro, and
a former minister. The cabinet also included one of the party's chief
political organisers and orators, Eusebio de Queiros Coutinho Matoso da
Camara, as minister of justice. Eusebio was the Angolan-born son of a
Portuguese magistrate, a magistrate who rose to the Brazilian supreme
court. Eusebio was also the nephew of a Portuguese slave merchant
turned planter, the cousin of a planter, and the heir and son-in-law of a
pre-eminent Portuguese First-Reign minister and planter, Jose Clemente
Pereira. He capped all of this as Rio's first and most celebrated police
chief, and was a key deputy in Rio's provincial assembly and the
Parliament. This was also a cabinet that enjoyed the support of the most
powerful reactionary political chieftain of the era, Hon6rio Hermeto
Carneiro Leao, a party founder, a former leader in the chamber, a senator,
a councillor of state, another former president of Rio de Janeiro, former
minister, a merchant's son-in-law, and a planter. Finally, the cabinet was
advised by Bernardo Pereira de Vasconcelos, a party founder, the reactionaries' most feared orator, the foremost public champion of the African
slave trade, a senator, councillor of state, and former minister.28
27

Barman,Brazil, chs. 7-8, passim;Mosher, 'Pernambuco', ch. 3 and 204-12; Needell,

'Party', pt. 3.
28 On
ilustres
Paulino, later Visconde do Uruguai, see S. A. Sisson, Galeriadosbrasileiros
2 vols., 2a. ed. (Sao Paulo, 1948 [1859]), vol. I, pp. 33-8; Macedo
(Os contemporaneos),
Soares, Nobiliarquia fluminense(Rio de Janeiro, n.d.), p. 93 and pt. i, passim; Tavares

doimperio(Brasilia,1979), PP. 328-9; Jose Ant6nio Soaresde

Lyra, Instituifoespoliticas

702

JeffreyD. Needell

The emperor followed through with the logic of his cabinet

appointments; in I849, he dissolved the chamber, calling for new
elections. The elections were controlled by cabinet agents at the provincial
and local levels to deny opposition voters and electors their rights and to
ensure a reactionary majority in the chamber. In effect, in December I 849,
when the newly elected deputies met in Rio to prepare for their first
session, they were a reactionary majority supporting a reactionary cabinet.
The Liberal minority present was bitter and determined to undermine the
cabinet and its ministers' party as minorities had traditionally done through criticism and obstruction in the chamber, and criticism and insult
in party newspapers.2
This, then, was the political scene in which the slave-trade policy debate
of I850 took place.

The policy debateof i8go

There is no question that the reactionaries, identified as they were
personally and electorally with the merchant-planter interests in Rio de
Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Bahia, and Pernambuco, were in favour of the
Souza, A vidado Viscondedo Uruguai(s8o7- 866): PaulinoJoseSoaresdeSouza(Sao Paulo,

1944). On Rodrigues Torres, later Visconde de Itaborai, see Sisson, Galleria, vol. I, pp.
49-52; Barao de Vasconcellos e o Barao Smith de Vasconcellos, ArchivoNobiliarchico
brasileiro (Lausanne, i918), s.v., Itaborahy; Joao Lyra Filho, Visconde de Itaborai: A
luneta do imperio (Rio de Janeiro, I985); and Tavares Lyra, Instituifoes, pp. 287-8. On
Eusebio, see Sisson, Galleria, vol. I, pp. 19-22, 28; Tavares Lyra, Instituifoes, p. 252;

in a ith-Century
andResistance
Thomas H. Holloway, PolicingRio deJaneiro:Repression
City (Stanford, 1993), pp. I03-5,

I23-42;

Vasconcellos e Vasconcellos, Archivo, s.v.,

Sao Diogo; Florentino, Em costas,p. 283. On Eusebio's father-in-law,Jose Clemente

for Libertyin BrazilandPortugal:
Pereira,see Neill Macaulay,Dom Pedro:TheStruggle
I798-1834 (Durham, NC, I986), pp. 107, II3

3-,
31,

48-5I,

220-I;

Francisco D.

Falc6n e Ilmar Rohloff de Mattos, 'O Processo de Independenciano Rio de Janeiro',

in Carlos Guilherme Mota, 1822: Dimensoes(Sao Paulo, 1972), pp. 320-8, 33 1-4; Sisson,
Galleria, vol. I, pp. 27-32. On Hon6rio, later Marques de Parana, see Sisson, Galleria,
vol. I, pp. I5-I8; Henrique Carneiro Leao Teixeira Filho et al., 'Centenario do
Falecimento do Marques de Parana', RIHGB, vol. 236 (July-Sept., 1957), pp. 25 -420;

Vasconcellos e Vasconcellos, Archivo, s.v., Parana; Tavares Lyra, Instituifoes,pp.

Mauriliode Gouveia, Marquesde Parana:Umavaraodo Imperio(n.l., I962). On
272-3;
eo
Vasconcelos, see Octavio Tarquinio de Sousa, BernardoPereirade Vasconcellos
seu tempo (Rio de Janeiro, 1937); Sisson, Galleria, vol. I, pp. 271-8;

Tavares Lyra,

Instituifoes,
p. 239. The political roles and socio-economic relationshipsof these men is
detailed in Needell, 'Party', pts. 2, 3.
29 On this cabinetand the associatedparliamentarypolitics, see Pereirada Silva, Memorias,
vol. I, chs. 11-12; Nabuco, Um estadista, vol. I, pp. 13-I8;

Barman, Brail, pp. 13z-5.

The electoralabuse sketched here had become typical since 1841, and was initiated by
the reactionaries' opposition. See the account of this in JC, 2 May I842 and 14, 5 Jan.
I843, 7 March 1843; 0 Brasil, 27 March I840; 27, 30 May I841; 8, II, 23, 25, 27, 30
May 1844; 25 Sept. I844; 30 Oct. 23, Nov. I847; Pereira da Silva, Memorias,vol. i, chs.
3-1I, passim, especially pp. 30-7, 26-7; Barman, Brazil, pp. 2I0-II.

The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade in i81o

703

Atlantic slave trade. Nonetheless, their Liberal opposition was also tainted
by the commerce. They had most recently presided over governments
which had looked the other way during that trade's two most active
years; they were the party whose cabinets had been unable or unwilling
to satisfy the increasingly frustrated agents of British anti-traffic policy,
apparently stalling on both past obligations or new agreements that
should have put an end to the slaving. Indeed, from the I83os, both
Reactionary and Liberal justice ministers had remarked on the essential
reason for this impasse: the prevalent belief that without constantly
renewed access to African labour, Brazilian agriculture and commerce
would wither (not to mention the fiscal base of the State). As late as
January I850, one of the foremost Liberal opposition orators, Holanda
Cavalcanti (a senator, former candidate for regent, former minister, and
son of one of the most distinguished sugar families of Pernambuco), had
called for the revocation of the British treaty obligations and Brazilian
assumption of all slave-trade regulation.30
If, then, neither party had an interest in ending the slave trade, how did
it come to end? As has been demonstrated, the revisionists have presented
no convincing evidence to suggest the decision was derived from either
fear of insurrection or fear of fever. In fact, research into the political
evidence directly related to the cabinet's decision - evidence the
revisionists have generally neglected - confirms this. The most respected
periodical of the Party of Order in 850 was O Brasil, largely written by
the reactionaries' chief publicist, Justiniano Jose da Rocha, who knew the
party's chiefs personally, had articulated the party's position when it was
out of power, and now published his paper with government subsidies. In
the defence of abolition of the trade from as early as January I850, he
made no mention of a linkage to yellow fever or to insurrection to sustain
his arguments. Indeed, at the height of the debate, this writer, who can be
taken to speak to and for the policy makers in question, tried to persuade
the party faithful of the wisdom of abolition partly by arguing that the
African captives and their descendants could be expected to increase
30 Vasconceloscalled for the repealof the slave trade'sabolition 24 July I835 (see Annaes,
1835, t. 2, 24 July) and stopped enforcementof significantregulationsas a ministerin

183 ; see Bethell, Abolition,p. 84. Jose ClementePereira,as a memberof the provincial
assemblyof Rio de Janeiro,called for the ban's abolition, as well (see JC, 2 Dec. 1837).
See also the mutual accusations of connections to the slavers in Annaes, I850, t. 2,
6 July, particularlythe defenceof RodriguesTorresand that of the reactionarystalwart,
Silveira da Mota (ibid., 15 July); O Brasil, 22 Jan. i85o and I6 July I85o. For the
ministers' evasions, see P. J. Soares de Sousa, Relatorio[I843], pp. 39-40 and Bethell,

Abolition, pp. 85-7, 220, 235-6, 241, 275-8I, 284. On Holanda's proposal, see JC,
14 May i850. On Holanda, later Visconde de Albuquerque,see Nabuco, Um estadista,
vol. 1, pp. 36-42, 77; Tavares Lyra, Instituif?es,pp. 226-7; Mosher, 'Pernambuco',
pp. 85-8, 97-100.

704

JeffreyD. Needell

sufficiently for labour needs with a modicum of humane care - where is

the fear of insurrection there?31
One can do better, however, than the party's premier journalist. One
can turn to the public arguments of the policy makers themselves.
Eusebio addressed the need for abolition twice in his I850 ministerial
reports to the chamber; in neither does he mention yellow fever, and he
barely alludes to the issue of internal security once. More important still
is the key speech in the history of the cabinet's policy, the speech in favour
of abolition made by Paulino in July I85o, a speech of approximately an
hour and a half. In it, Paulino never mentions either a linkage to yellow
fever or fear of insurrection. It has been argued that, in 8 52, in the course
of another long speech, Eusebio, defending the decision of his ministry
from opposition charges, does mention the public security issue, briefly
citing recent examples of two or three foiled revolts. However, this
1852 speech obviously

had no impact on the

85o decision in the cabinet

or the chamber. It was a brief reference made to defend a decision already

taken; it was not used in the public debates which led to the decision.
Could insurrection have weighed, nonetheless, in the deliberations of the
cabinet in its private meetings? In a review of what remains of the key
private and official correspondence of the ministers, I have found nothing
suggesting as much. Finally, it is worth noting that in the closed July 85o
meeting of the council of state, in which the Emperor presided over a
meeting of that council attended by the cabinet as well, expressly to
discuss the issues related to the abolition of the African trade, neither
yellow fever nor insurrection is ever mentioned.32
31

On Justiniano,see SacramentoBlake, Diccionario

bibliographico
brazileira,7 vols. (Rio de
Janeiro, I899), vol. 5, pp. 269-73; Roderick J. Barman, 'Justiniano Jose da Rocha e

a epoca da conciliacao:Como se escreveu "cago, Reacao,Transacao",' RIGHB, vol.

301 (Oct.-Dec. 1973), pp. 3-7.; Ant6nio Cindido, Formafao de literatura brasileira, 2
vols. (Sao Paulo, I956), vol. 2, pp. 127-35; R. Magalhaes Junior, Tris panfletdriosdo
SegundaReinado(Sao Paulo, 1956), pp. I27-59; Elmano Cardim, JustinianoJose da Rocha,

(Sao Paulo, I964). On Justiniano, the political press and O Brasil, see Moreira de
Azevedo, 'Origem e Desenvolvimento da Imprensano Rio de Janeiro', RIHGB, t. 23,

za pt., (I865), pp. 209, 222-3 and Nelson Werneck Sodre, Histdria da imprensano Brasil
The O Brasil editorials and other anti-trade
(Rio de Janeiro, 1966), pp. 202, 209-10.
in
22
are
19
pieces
Jan.,
Jan., 13 July-27 July I850. The piece on natural reproduction
is in i6 July I850.
32

Eusebio's reports are: Euzebio de Queiroz Coitinho Mattoso Camara,Relatorioda

a AssembleaGeralLegislativana sa.sessao
Pepartifao[sic] dosNegociosdaJustifaapresentada
de EstadoEuZebiodeQueiro'
Ministroe Secretario
da 8a. Legislaturaem I8 o pelo respectivo
Coitinho Mattoso Camara (Rio de Janeiro, I85o), p. z2 and his Relatorio ... na segunda

sessdoda OctavaLegislatura... (Rio de Janeiro, I85o), p. 12. The mention of internal

security is in the second relat6rio. Paulino's speech is in Annaes, I850, t. 2, 15 July.
Eusebio's speech is in Annaes, 1852, t. 2, I6 July. There is no mention of security in
Eusebio's report of 851 or 18 52; see Euzebio de Queiroz Coutinho Mattoso Camara,
Relatorio ... Terceira Sessao da Oitava Legislatura ... (Rio de Janeiro, I85 ), pp. 6-7;

The Abolition of the Bragilian Slave Trade in I8go

705

Again, then, one confronts the central question. If both parties had
tacitly supported the contraband slave trade, and if the reactionary cabinet
of I8 5o was especially close to the interests linked to the trade, and, finally,
if the revisionists' claims regarding the impact of insurrection fear and
yellow fever cannot be accepted, why, then, did the cabinet argue for and
successfully pass the abolition legislation? Essentially, the evidence
remains in favour of Bethell's argument. British pressure was necessary.
Yet, as he argued, however briefly, this was not sufficient. The deft
response of the Brazilian statesmen was crucial. Let us take each of these
up in turn.
The immediate antecedent to the debate of 8 5o was increasing British
pressure since the I845 passage of the so-called Aberdeen bill, by which
the United Kingdom claimed for itself the right to intervene in Brazilian
commerce unilaterally when its agents perceived that commerce to be
slaving. This had meant growing direct intervention and diplomatic
difficulty as Brazilians protested and the British persisted. It became clear
to Brazilian statesmen of both parties that British antagonism and
intervention were not going away. Indeed, in I849, as antagonism to
British policy in this matter increased in the British parliament, the British
cabinet decided to press more strenuously, by shifting elements of the fleet
which had been occupied in the Rio de la Plata to the Brazilian coast. By
the first week of January 8 5 , they had begun to pick off Brazilian ships
and, thus, to initiate the final political crisis.33

Relatorio ... na Quarta Sessao da Octava Legislatura ... (Rio de Janeiro, I852), pp. 9-0o.
In both 85 I and 852 Eusebio called for shifting the slave population from cities and

coastal areas to the interior agriculturalfrontier, but not for reasons of security. He
notes only the need to end the trade and provide the interiorwith needed labour and
to begin the necessary transition to wage labor. In regard to private ministerial
correspondence,I have reviewed the appropriatecollections in the ministers' papers
retainedin the Arquivo Nacional, the Instituto Hist6rico e Geografico Brasileiro,the
Arquivo Hist6rico do Museu Nacional, the Arquivo do Museu Imperial,the Biblioteca
Nacional's Secao de Manuscritos,and the Arquivo Hist6rico do Itamarati.For the
council of state deliberations,see Jose Hon6rio Rodrigues (ed.), Atas do Conselhode
Estado, I3 vols. (Brasilia, 1978-78), vol. 3, pp. 247-67 ('Ata de
33 Bethell, Abolition, pp. 2i6-20,
234-7, 240-52,
257-9, 275-81,

Ii

de julho de I850').
As Bethell

306-11.

shows, the tarifftreatiesbenefittingBritainwere perceivedby the Braziliansto be a key

explanationfor Britishpressureand were alwayscoupled in key moments of the 84os
negotiations. On the January I85o crisis, see O Brasil, I9 Jan. I85o. The political
responseto the crisis may have been affectedby the impactof the yellow fever epidemic
(December I849-May

8 5o). Although the Annaes show that sessions continued to take

place, Pereirada Silva mistakenlyrecallsthe suspensionof chamberwork from January

to 3 May I85o (see Pereira da Silva, Memorias, vol. I, pp. 214-x6). This is a striking
error on the memoirist's part, who is occasionally taken as unreliable by (liberal)
commentatorsbecauseof his reactionarypartisanship,not his memory.Could it be that
the quorum necessary for business was there but that key individuals were not and

706

JeffreyD. Needell

However, as Bethell acknowledges, by then, the cabinet had already

decided to move against the trade. Eusebio's internal memorandum on the
policy and his police actions against local traders make this clear. By late
1849, that is, before the British accelerated their naval actions, Eusebio
was already articulating and effecting a policy which would guarantee the
contraband slave holdings to their owners, while cutting off the trade
which was bringing the Empire into conflict with the United Kingdom.
On 14 January, a week after the new British offensive (7 January), Eusebio
appeared before the chamber and in dramatic fashion summarised the
cabinet's decision and its political tactic of isolating the traders from the
slaveholders. A skilled orator, he was careful to conclude these remarks
by noting the arrests and seizures he had authorised, making an explicit
linkage between such repression and the enabling legislation the cabinet
had in mind for the revised bill it was preparing for the chamber's support
later in the legislative session. The chief reactionary publicist, Justiniano,
simultaneously published Eusebio's report and began his own propaganda
in its favour. The timing of the abolition measure, however, was
dramatically pushed forward by the mid-I8o5 actions of the British. It is
important to note that these were undertaken despite Paulino's care to
keep the British envoy, Hudson, informed of their impending legislation.
They were actions of the most provocative sort, involving more attacks
on shipping and intervention in Brazilian waters and on Brazilian soil.
They brought Brazilians into the streets and into the chamber, and gave
the Liberals weapons for divisive critiques. The Liberals charged the
cabinet with collusion with the slave merchants, incompetence, and lack
of patriotism. All of this complicated the cabinet's proceedings in terms
of timing and appearance. The cabinet had to find a way to defend
Brazilian sovereignty, undercut the British position by eliminating the
trade, and do both without either going to war or appearing to cave in.34

deputies' private preoccupations slowed matters? This might be determined by a

careful review of attendanceand debates for those four months, a task beyond the
scope of this study. One wonders if this must be taken into account in reading the
commentsabout delay legislating the end of the tradein Bethell (Abolition,p. 335) and
34

Eltis (Economic, pp. 216-I 7).

See Eusebio's first Justice report, Relatorio... .[i8oJ], pp. 21-2, in which he refers to
the need 'to modify the existing pending legislation [a reference to a still toothless
repression project the liberals had begun]' and adds 'the obligations to which we find
ourselves bound especially demand prompt and effective measures' (pace Eltis,
Economic,pp. 2I6-17, who claims, entirely on the basis of British diplomatic sources,
that the cabinet intended to pass ineffective legislation). Eusebio's repressive measures
in I849 (cited in Bethell, Abolition, p. 316) are referred to in the I850 report just cited
(pp. 2I-2), read to the chamber on 14 Jan. I850 (see Annaes, I849, [sic] t. I, 14 Jan.
85o). See the close correspondence between Justiniano's columns in O Brasil and the

The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade in i87o

707

Paulino's able handling of Hudson, his widely applauded speech in the

chamber, and the intense propaganda in O Brasil accomplished this. On
the one hand, they made a principled defence of Brazilian international
rights; on the other, they made careful arguments to the public in general,
and to the reactionary constituency of the party in specific, as to why the
end of the traffic was in Brazil's best interests. Paulino's arguments made
in the chamber on 5 July 1850 mirrored those made in the council of state
four days earlier: that the trade had endured because of the widespread
belief in Brazil that it was crucial to the economy, that both parties had
been unable to put an end to it on that account, that Brazil had thus
unwillingly become isolated internationally and increasingly subject to
British pressure, that such pressures ensured that the Empire could not
hope to maintain the traffic indefinitely, that the trade profited foreign
slavers far more than Brazilian planters (who were increasingly ruined by
slave-purchase debt), and, finally, that to maintain the traffic and, thus, to
defy the British would be a shameful, untenable position inevitably
leading to escalating conflict. This last point was clearly the gravest. In the
council, the prospect of continued violence and the clear potential for war
worried councillors because it meant commercial disaster, public division
and recrimination, diplomatic isolation, and, after an inevitable defeat,
national destabilisation and consequent implosion. This was generally
alluded to rather obliquely in Paulino's speech; it was clearer in the
council. Doubtless war would frighten the opposition as much as the
cabinet, but it was a prospect one suspects was particularly nightmarish
for the reactionary leaders. After all, every one of these men had, since his
youth, spent his career shoring up the integrity and strength of the nationstate. Bethell, in a tantalising note, relates how Paulino privately overcame
key opposition to the policy within his own party by stressing the fact that
only such a policy could avoid war. In effect, the reactionary leaders and
their party chose their state over their long-term access to slave labour.
This choice seems clear enough, even between the lines, in comments
Paulino made on I5 July, in the last moments of his celebrated oration:
I sincerelybelieve that it is indispensableto leave this situationin which we find
ourselves, that it is necessaryto provide ourselves with a broad, sincere, frank
solution to all of these issues [applause];to these issues which provoke conflicts
every day, which can bring others even greater .... When a powerful nation, such

as is Great Britain, pursues with untiring tenacity for the period of more than
forty yearsthe task of ending the trade ... will we be able to resist such a torrent,

cabinet'sexplicitpolicy throughout JanuaryI 85o. A taste of the cabinet'sstruggle with

an embittered liberal opposition is clear in Annaes, r849 [sic], t. I, 8 Jan. 8 5o and ibid.,
I85o, t.

2,

6 and

5 July.

708

Jeffrey D. Needell

which sweeps us along, as surely as the world in which we live? I do not believe
so. [Applause.]35
Although this is clearly explanation enough for the cabinet's decision,
another pressure that went unmentioned in Paulino's public argument
needs to be noted. Bethell suggests in any number of places that Brazil's
concern with maintaining good diplomatic relations with Britain derived
partly from Platine affairs. It is a telling point. Over the course of the
i84os, as Brazilian relations with Argentina deteriorated, Brazilians hoped
to secure the support, or at least the neutrality, of the British. The latter,
who had played a key role in the region since the 82zos, had intervened
jointly with France against Argentina when Juan Manuel de Rosas'
however, after mutual
policies had antagonised them. By I849-1850,
concessions, the Anglo-French naval blockade had ended, and it was clear
and possible war were
to all concerned that Brazilian intervention
35 The quotation is from Annaes, 850, t. 2, 15 July, For Paulino's difficult work with the

British envoy, see Bethell, Abolition, pp. 328-9, 335-7, 344-58 and J. A. Soares de
Souza, A vida, pp. 204-27,

passim. For his speech,

see Annaes, i85o,

t. 2, 15 July. For

0 Brasil's synchronised propaganda, see 19 Jan, 13-27 July I85O. For the Council of
State's deliberations, see Rodrigues, Atas, vol. 3, pp. 247-67. On the careers and
politics of the reactionary ministers, see Needell, 'Party', pt. 2. Note that each
reactionary leader had entered political life early on, sometimes after a brief stint in the
magistracy: Paulino, from the age of twenty-eight (I835); Rodrigues Torres, from
twenty-nine (183 ); Eusebio, from twenty-six (I838); Hon6rio, who was not a minister
in I850 but played a key role in the senate and council of state, from twenty-nine
(I830). Vasconcelos, who had been a key player from thirty-one (I826), was a noted
defender of the African trade. Nonetheless, he apparently did not attack the cabinet's
policy in either the senate or the council of state from the time of the policy's
announcement to his unexpected death in May (January-May 185o). He died in the
yellow fever epidemic, before the enabling legislation was debated in public. It has been
argued that his death removed an important obstacle to the cabinet's policy, an idea
derived from the speculation of James Hudson, the British envoy to Rio de Janeiro,
hardly an impartial source. On this point, see Bethell, Abolition, p. 334, n. i, citing and
quoting Hudson's opinion. Bethell notes in the same place that Hon6rio, another
staunch defender of the trade, supported the cabinet's policy in i85o. There is no
reason to assume Vasconcelos, a political realist and the architect of the reactionary
party and its recreation of the Brazilian state, would have done otherwise. The note
regarding the essential choice between war and slave trade is in Bethell, Abolition,
p. 3 38, n. 2, quoting a report by the British diplomat, Henry Southern, of a conversation
with Paulino in I852. Some twenty years later, Pereira da Silva, a key reactionary,
recalled the care with which the party's leaders conferred with and convinced party
deputies of the necessity of their abolitionist policy; see his mention of this in a public
debate among Conservatives in JC, 29 Aug. 1871 [24 Aug.]. It is important to note,
despite some suggestion that the reactionaries gave up the trade either because it
would make their slaveholdings' value increase or because of the glut of I845-I850,
that the chief policy maker was apprehensive. Paulino, on diplomatic mission to France
in the mid-i85os, sought to promote immigrant wage labour as an alternative to
African captives, because he feared catastrophe with the African supply cut off. See
Visconde do Uruguay to [Jose Maria da Silva] Paranhos, Paris, 2 Jan i856, Arquivo
Hist6rico to Itamarati/Arquivo do Visconde do Rio Branco, L32IMzPi.

The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade in i8yo

709

inevitable, given the provocations and hostility of Buenos Aires. Indeed,

Paulino was brought into the cabinet in October 1849 to effect a more
aggressive policy, thought necessary after a provocative failure to reach a
diplomatic entente with the porteho leader in September I849. As his
biographer has noted, the Platine question and the slave trade crisis were
the two great issues Paulino faced upon taking up his portfolio. As the
minister for foreign affairs made clear in the privacy of the council of state
when British war over the trade threatened in July 85o, such a possibility
'terribly aggravates the complications of our affairs in the Rio de la Plata'.
While one cannot judge how much this contributed to the cabinet's
determination to resolve the slave-trade issue with Britain, there is no
doubt it added something. Indeed, it is worth recalling that Paulino's
careful planning, begun simultaneously with the increasing British
pressure against the trade in late 1849 and early I850, led to diplomatic
and military success against Rosas by i852.36
Given both the constitutional process and political realities of the time,
the public agreement of the monarch, the council of state, and the cabinet
on the resolution of the slave-trade crisis was necessary as a basis for
promoting the policy. All this was in place as Paulino stepped in front of
the chamber in the unusual, profound silence noted by the official
recorder. Nonetheless, Paulino's speech to the chamber (and Justiniano's
coordinated columns addressed to the broader political public), is central
to understanding how that policy could be accepted by a constituency
whose interests were fundamentally threatened. It was hardly spontaneous
rhetorical enthusiasm that led Paulino to conclude his speech by essentially
making the policy an issue of confidence in the cabinet. If the chamber had
not supported the cabinet, established parliamentary practice and effective
politics alike would have compelled the ministers to resign. The emperor
would have had to call the Liberals back to power. That, in turn, would
have been worse for the reactionaries and their constituency. As the
political patterns of the I84os demonstrate, this would have brought
36 Paulino'sstatementin the Councilof Stateis quoted from Rodrigues, Atas, p. 248. On

the Platinequestion and Anglo-Britishdiplomacyregardingthe slave trade,see Bethell,

Abolition, pp. 240, 24I, 246, 253, 281, 292-8, 349, 363, 367. Paula Sousa's Liberal

administrationwas interestedin a similarsolution to the Africantradecrisisfor this and

the other reasons clear in the reactionaries'thinking (ibid., p. 292-3). Paula Sousa's
failureto do so is suggestive of the largerpoint madebelow - that the liberalsdid not
possess the political strength to carry out national policies which the reactionaries,
becauseof their strength,could. For the centralityof Platinediplomacyin the concerns
of the reactionary cabinet, see J. A. Soares de Souza, A vida, pp. 94-8, 252-3, ff. For
the larger context, see John F. Cady, ForeignInterventionin the Rio de la Plata: I838-I8so
(Philadelphia, 1929), chs. 5, 7-9; H. S. Ferns, Britain and Argentina in the Nineteenth
Century (Oxford, I960), ch. 9; John Lynch, Argentine Dictator: Juan Manuel de Rosas:
(Oxford, I981), chs. 7, 8.
I829-18'2

7 o

JeffreyD. Needell

about internal party division, the Liberals' capture of political offices, the
reversal of local power holding, and, of course, the clear prospect of
diplomatic and military disaster under a Liberal administration. Paulino
thus masterfully shored up support in both the chamber and the electorate
that was crucial to the policy's success.37
Bethell, though he emphasises the actions of the British, did well to
note the crucial role of the Brazilian cabinet in the final outcome. The
diplomatic focus of his work, however, did not compel him to explore the
domestic political context that makes that role comprehensible. Here we
have demonstrated that the origin and political role of the reactionaries,
the political weakness of their opposition, and the motivations and power
consequent upon the empowerment of a reactionary cabinet of the quality
noted are key components in an explanation of the success of the i85o
37

The Constitutionof 1824 establishedthe monarchas a fourth power, the Moderating

Power. As part of this, no legislation could pass without the monarch's signature;
indeed, no cabinet was appointed or retained without his public confidence. The
council of state was bound to be consulted on all grave mattersof state and had been,
as noted. On the constitutionand the origins of the monarch'srole in it, see Macaulay,
Dom Pedro, pp. 161-4; Barman, Brazil, pp. 123-6; and the great contemporary studies:

2 vols. (Rio de Janeiro, 1862);

Visconde do Uruguay, Ensaiosobredireitoadministrativo,
PoliticadoImperiodo
da Constitui?ao
Joaquim Rodriguesde Sousa, Analysee commentario
2 vols. (Sao Luis, I867); and
braZilieiro,
Brazilou theoriaepraticadegovernoconstitucional
do imperio,
Jose Antonio Pimenta Bueno, Direitopublicobrasileiroe andliseda constituifao
3a. ed. (Brasflia, I978[I857]). The Moderating Power is generally held to be the idea

of the Swiss-born,French theorist, BenjaminConstant; see his 'The Nature of Royal

Power in a Constitutional Monarchy', in Political Writings (Cambridge, 1988),
pp. i83-93. On the ModeratingPower in Brazilianconstitutionallaw, see article98 of
the ConstituiFao
politicadoimperiodoBrasil(Rio de Janeiro, I824), and Uruguay, Ensaio,
vol. 2, pp. 17, 36-8. It is worth noting that the council members assembled on 1 July

185o includedthe Visconde de Olinda,the Visconde de Abrantes,Lopes Gama,Miranda

Ribeiro, Paula Sousa, Alves Branco, Limpo de Abreu, Hon6rio, and Lima e Silva, as
well as the emperor and the cabinet (which included the Marquesde Monte Alegre,
another councillor of state). By my count, of the ten councillors present, at least six
were reactionaries.Moreover, the direction of the debate was necessarilygiven by
Paulino, who, holding the portfolio for foreign affairs, had laid out the agenda
beforehand.Pedro II made his position clear, but did so obliquely, as was his practice.
In this case, the emperor made his opinion known to a courtier noted for a loose
tongue; see Bethell, Abolition, p. 340, citing Heitor Lyra, who, in turn, cites
memoranda of the French diplomat St. Georges (23 July and 4 Sept. I850); see also
Lyra's Hist6ria de Dom Pedro II: 1821-91, 3 vols. (Sao Paulo, 1939), vol. I, p. 324; cf.
Barman, Citizen, pp. 124-5. On Paulino's explicit appeal for a vote of confidence,
Annaes, 850o,t. 2, I5 July. The appeal is direct: 'If the Chamber understands that the
situation is grave, that the hour presents difficulties, and that the ministry has the
courage, intelligence, and dedication sufficient to resolve them as the dignity and the
interest of the country demand, give it full and entire confidence [applause], lend it
broad and complete cooperation [Great applause].' On Justiniano's appeal, see the
close arguments in O Brasil throughout the crucial month of July 185o. The political
practice with respect to the results of a change in the party in power is manifest in the
1840s' political history. Barman, Brazil, chs. 7, 8, passim, Mosher, 'Pernambuco',
chs. 3, 5, passim; and Needell, 'Party', pt. 3.

The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade in z18o

711

policy. It is easy to imagine the British pressing hard upon, say, yet
another weak Liberal cabinet, poorly supported by yet another weak,
undisciplined, and ideologically heterogeneous chamber of the sort typical
during the Liberal administrations of 1844-I848. Indeed, the frustration
and contempt evident in British handling of the affair doubtless derived
in part from their experience with such previous administrations. The
realities of the era suggest that the result would have been British
pressure, Brazilian protest and ineffectiveness, British armed intervention,
and Brazilian resistance, political chaos, and military conflict. As it was,
the situation was precarious from start to finish. In a society and a nationstate founded upon slaveholding, the reactionaries' decision to give up
the trade could not have been easy to contemplate. Any number of
catastrophic possibilities, given their constituency's assumptions, the
Empire's size, their political opposition's unyielding hostility, the
increasingly threatening impasse with Argentina, and the often stubborn,
politically obtuse threats and interventions of the British, can easily be
imagined. However, this particular cabinet had both the talent and the
political credibility to manage both internal and external difficulties with
dignity and finesse; they brought off this extremely divisive policy
without any clear related damage. They would go on for two more years,
in one of the two longest cabinet administrations in the monarchy's
history.38
These reactionary ministers were slaveholders, kith and kin of slave
traders, planters, and provincial reactionaries, yet they had nonetheless
presided over a government which put an end to the slave trade. They did
so to maintain the nation-state of which they had dreamt in the I83os: a
parliamentary monarchy dominating half a continent. One cannot
understand these matters without turning to analysis of political
history and elite origins - the necessary complement to the more
rigorous, documented subaltern analysis which the past demands for its
understanding.
38

Bethell'sappreciationof the cabinet'srole is clearin Abolition,pp. 34X-2, 363; so is that

of Murilo de Carvalhoin Teatro,pp. 53-6 , passim.Regarding the constant political
danger offered to the cabinet's success by British pressures (and the frustrationand
contempt informing those pressures),see Bethell, ibid.,pp. 320, 328-9, 335-7, 344-58.
The cabinet'srole in the Second Reign is clearin Pereirada Silva, Memorias,vol. I, chs.
1I- 3; Nabuco, Um estadista,vol. i, pp. 13-I8; Barman, Brazil, pp. 23 -5; J. A.
Soares de Souza, A vida,chs. 7-I5, especiallypp. 425-42.