The Eusébio de Queirós Law is passed…
September 1850 CE to 1851 CE
The Eusébio de Queirós Law is passed in the Brazilian Empire, to abolish the international slave trade, on September 4, 1850.
Named after Eusébio de Queirós Coutinho Matoso da Câmara, who is the Brazilian Minister of Justice from 1848–1852, this law is put into action by the government acting under Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II.
This law reinforces a law that had been put into place on November 7, 1831, but had never been fully enforced; it also is based on an 1837 anti-slave trade bill of Felisberto Caldeira Brant, which had not been enacted into a law.
This bill had been modified and reintroduced into the Chamber of Deputies and eventually passed.
Even though the slave trade is officially abolished in 1850, slavery itself will not be abolished in Brazil until 1888, which makes Brazil the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery.
The government is, however, against the British pressures applied to end such trade, such as the seizure of slave ships by British war ships.
In 1845, the British parliament had enacted the Aberdeen Act, which allowed British cruisers to seize Brazilian slave ships in attempts to end their slave trade.
This had caused Brazilians to import as many slaves as possible in case the British succeeded in abolishing their slave trade, which is why the vast majority of enslaved people had arrived in Brazil during 1847–1849.
Slavery in Brazil is extremely prevalent and slave ships carried between three million six hundred thousand and five million enslaved people into Brazil over roughly three centuries (1525-1851).
Rio de Janeiro alone has the largest enslaved population, where thirty-eight point three percent of its population consists of slaves, or eighty thousand slaves.
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