Queirós Law

Queirós Law (named for Minister of Justice Eusébio de Queirós), an enactment passed in 1850 by the Brazilian Parliament that effectively put an end to the transatlantic slave trade between Africa and Brazil. Although a similar law had existed since 1831, making all Africans who entered Brazil after that date technically free persons, within Brazil it had been ignored. Planters, especially those in the rich coffee-producing areas of Rio de Janeiro, had continued to import slaves in record numbers despite their sharply rising prices. Such practices became less tenable after the British passed the Aberdeen Act in 1845, thereby declaring the slave trade equivalent to piracy and claiming the authority to search and seize slave cargoes even from ships in Brazilian ports. The Queirós Law assigned stiff penalties against both sellers and buyers of contraband slaves and declared null and void all debts owed for past purchases from illegal slave traders. Enforcement of the Queirós Law caused the trade in slaves to dwindle to a trickle within a few years, although as late as 1859 a few wealthy planters continued to import contraband slaves for their up-country coffee fazendas. Both contemporaries and later scholars have debated whether British pressure or Brazilian initiative accounts for the end of the trade. All would have to agree, however, that without enforcement by Brazilian authorities the trade could not have been suppressed.

See alsoCoffee Industry; Queirós Coutinho Matoso da Câmera, Eusébio de; Slavery: Brazil; Slave Trade, Abolition of: Brazil.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Leslie Bethell, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade: Britain, Brazil, and the Slave Trade Question, 1807–1869 (1970).

Additional Bibliography

Leite, Alfredo Carlos Teixeira. O tráfico negreiro e a diplomacia britânica. Caxias do Sul: EDUCS, 1998.

Tavares, Luís Henrique Dias. Comércio proibido de escravos. São Paulo: Editora Atica em co-ed. com o Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, 1988.

                              Sandra Lauderdale Graham