Slavery In Brazil, It's Protagonists and Influence on Modern Brazil

Slavery shaped Brazil's social structure and ethnical landscap

During the colonial Period and for over six decades after the 1822 independence, slavery  was a mainstay of the Brazilian economy, especially in mining and sugar cane production.

Brazil obtained 35.4% of all African slaves traded in the Atlantic slave trade, more than 3 million slaves were sent to Brazil to work mainly on sugar cane plantations from the 16th to the 19th century. Starting around 1550, the Portuguese began to trade African slaves due to two main reasons:

1) The unenculturated indigenous peoples deteriorated rapidly, and became increasingly warier of the Portuguese, thus, obtaining new indigenous slaves was becoming harder and harder.

2) The Portuguese Empire, at the time, controlled some stages within the African slave trade's commercial chain, thus, providing the Brazilian landholders with the opportunity to import slaves from Portuguese trading posts in Africa. Portuguese, Brazilian, and African slave traders managed to profit even more from the increased demand.

During the 15th century, after realising the extension and importance of slave trading for the African economy, the Kingdom of Portugal's soldiers, explorers and merchants involved themselves in the trade in black African slaves along with other tradable itemsthrough the establishment of several coastal trading posts. Starting around 1550, the Portuguese began to trade African slaves to work the sugar plantations they were developing in their newly-discovered colony of Brazil, once the European discoverers needed more human resources to use in the new continent, and the numbers of native indigenous peoples had declined. Although Portuguese Prime MinisterMarquês de Pombal abolished slavery in mainland Portugal on the February 12th, 1761, slavery continued in Portugal's overseas colonies, particularly in Brazil.

The African slaves were useful for the sugar plantations in many ways. They were less vulnerable to tropical diseases. Slavery was practice among all classes. From late 18th century to the 1830s, including by the time of the Rebellions in Bahia, slaves were owned by upper and middle classes, by the poor, and even by other slaves.

The benefits of using the slaves far exceeded the costs to the owners. After 2-3 years, slaves repaid the cost of buying them, and slave plantation owners began to make profits from them. Brazil's plantation owners made lucrative profits per year. The very harsh manual labour of the sugar cane fields involved slaves using hoes to dig large trenches. They planted sugar cane in the trenches and then used their bare hands to spread manure.

A national survey conducted in 2000 by the Pastoral Land Commission, a Roman Catholic Church group, estimated that there were more than 25,000 forced workers in Brazil. More than 1,000 slave-like laborers were freed from a sugar cane plantation in 2007 by the Brazilian Government.

Bandeirantes

From Sao Paulo the Bandeirantes, adventurers mostly of mixed Portuguese and Indian ancestry, penetrated steadily westward in their search for Indian slaves. Along the Amazon river and its major tributaries, repeated slaving raids and punitive attacks left their mark. One French traveller in the 1740s described hundreds of miles of river banks with no sign of human life and once-thriving villages that were devastated and empty. In some areas of theAmazon Basin, and particularly among the Guarani of southern Brazil and Paraguay, the Jesuits had organized their Jesuit Reductions along military lines to fight the slavers. In 1628, Antônio Raposo Tavares led a bandeira, composed of 2,000 allied Indians, 900 Mamluks (Mestiços or Mestizos-Mixed race) and 69 white Paulistanos, to find precious metals and stones or to capture Indians for slavery or both. This expedition alone was responsible for the destruction of most of the Jesuit missions of Spanish Guairá and the enslavement of over 60,000 indigenous people.

Quilombo

Escaped slaves formed Maroon communities which played an important role in the histories of other countries such as Suriname, Puerto Rico, Cuba, andJamaica. In Brazil the Maroon villages were called quilombos and the most famous was Quilombo dos Palmares. In the mid to late 19th century, manyAmerindians were enslaved to work on rubber plantations.

Jean-Baptiste Debret

Jean-Baptiste Debret, a French painter who was active in Brazil in the first decades of the 19th Century, started out with painting portraits of members of the Brazilian Imperial family, but soon became concerned with the slavery of both blacks and the indigenous inhabitants. During the fifteen years Debret spent in Brazil, he not only concentrated on court rituals but the everyday life of slaves as well. His paintings on the subject (two appear on this page) helped draw attention to the subject in both Europe and Brazil itself.

Brazil, the world's largest sugar producer

The Clapham Sect, although their religious and political influence was more active in the Spanish Latin America, were a group of evangelical reformers that campaigned during much of the 19th century for the United Kingdom to use its influence and power to stop the traffic of slaves to Brazil. Besides moral qualms, the low cost of slave-produced Brazilian sugar meant that British colonies in the West Indies were unable to match the market prices of Brazilian sugar, and each Briton was consuming 16 pounds (7 kg) of sugar a year by the 19th century. This combination led to intensive pressure from the British government for Brazil to end this practice, which it did by steps over three decades. To this day, Brazil still is the world's largest sugar producer.

Steps towards freedom

Brazil achieved independence from Portugal in 1822. José Bonifácio de Andrade e Silva is credited as the "Father of Brazilian Independence". Around 1822, Representação to the Constituent Assembly was published and addressed that not only the slave trade must end, but also for the gradual emancipation of slaves. However, since this point until the 1880s, the Brazilian demand for slaves was filled by a gigantic increase in the importation of African slaves.

In 1848, the Brazilian slave trade continued on considerable level growing rapidly during the 19th century, and during this time the numbers reached as much as 60,000 slaves per year. Portugal and its territories in Africa had already stepped down from slave trade activities, but in other African coast's ports the slave trade continued. In Brazil, the foreign slave trade was finally abolished by 1850, and there were new laws on slave traffickers and speculators. Then, by 1871, the sons of the slaves were freed. In 1885, the slaves aged over 60 years were freed. The Paraguayan War contributed to end slavery, since slaves enlisted in exchange for freedom.

Brazil's 1877-78 Grande Seca (Great Drought) in the cotton-growing northeast, led to major turmoil, starvation, poverty and internal migration. As wealthy plantation holders rushed to sell their slaves in the south, popular resistance and resentment grew, inspiring numerous emancipation societies. They succeeded in banning slavery altogether in the province of Ceará by 1884. (Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts, 88-90)

Princess Isabel

Slavery was legally ended nationwide on May 13 by the Lei Aurea ("Golden Law") of 1888, by a legal act of Isabel, Princess Imperial of Brazil. In fact, it was an institution in decline by this time (since the 1880s the country began to attract European immigrant labor instead). Brazil was the last nation in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery. 

Most of this info is based loosely on Wikipedia.

What we're taught is similir to this, except it is sometimes edited to suit the powers to be. So many Brazilians would agree with what is written here.