Slavery in Brazil

Edmund Burke, the acclaimed author, and philosopher once said, “Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil. ” Between the 16th and 19th centuries in the Americas, millions on millions of slaves were brought to the New World. Their purpose was to work. The economy of most European colonies in America was dependent on slaves. The land that was discovered in the Americas was useless without sufficient slave labor to exploit it. In this essay, I will focus on two nations where slavery played an enormous role in the development of that country. First, in The United States, where in 1860 in South Carolina over 50 percent of the population were slaves.

Next, Brazil, the nation where about one-third of all salves from Africa were brought. In this essay I will compare slavery in The United States to slavery in Brazil, I will dissect the similarities and differences while focusing on why and how the slaves came, the demographic and religious aspects, the treatment of the slaves, and the aftermath on both countries due to slavery. Around the year 1530, the Portuguese came to Brazil in search of land and natural resources, specifically sugar. As the Portuguese and the indigenous people of Brazil battled for land, the Brazilians resisted against being enslaved.

As the Portuguese presence grew in Brazil so did disease, causing the death of most of the working indigenous people. As the number of sugar plantations grew, the demand for workers did as well. This is the main reason why Brazil began to import slaves from Africa. Although the origin of slaves in The United States was similar to Brazil, there were some differences. In the year 1619, only around 10 years after the British began to colonize the US, a Dutch slave trader exchanged about 20 Africans for food in Jamestown, Virginia. Like Brazil, the U. S needed workers for plantations, but while Brazil focused on the sugar plantations, the U.

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S was focused on the tobacco plantations. In general, both Brazil and the U.S. lacked a major resource in order to maintain a strong economy, that resource being workers. Although Brazil used more slaves towards sugar and the U. S used more towards tobacco, in general, the slaves worked in mines or they worked in sugar, rice, tobacco, or cotton plantation. Although the U. S played a larger role in the process, both Brazil and the U. S participated in the Triangular Slave Trade. Some say the Triangular Slave Trade is the reason why 10 to 15 million Africans were shipped to the Americas between 1650 and 1860.

The slave trade was simple yet wrong on so many levels. The slave trade took several different routes, but there were two popular ones. The most common route would first start in Europe where the Europeans would trade manufactured goods for slaves in Africa. Next, the slaves were transported across the Atlantic Ocean to Brazil and the Caribbean where the slaves were sold for huge profits or traded for sugar, coffee, and tobacco. The journey from Africa to the Americas was known as the middle passage. Olaudah Equiano was a slave captured and sold into slavery.

In his book, The Life of Olaudah Equiano the African, when describing the middle passage he writes, “I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a greeting in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life; I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat. I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables; and, on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across, The white people looked and acted, as I thought, in so savage a manner; for I had never seen among my people such instances of brutal cruelty.

The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, almost suffocated us. The air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable. As you can tell, the conditions were brutal, to say the least. Another popular triangular route taken was shipped from the U. S colonies would take a rum and other products to Africa in exchange for Slaves.

From there, the slaves were taken to Brazil and the Caribbean and sold for profit or sold for sugar and molasses to take back to the U. S where then the sugar and molasses were sold to rum makers. In general, the slave trade was horrific and inhumane, however, it is the reason that the U. S and Brazil were able to maintain a steady economy. Although there were many similarities between the Brazilian slaves and the U. S slaves, there were quite a few specific differences as well. One of the largest differences in slavery between Brazil and the U. S was demographic.

Generally speaking, the Brazilian slaves were usually decreasing while the U. S slaves were usually increasing. This is due to several reasons. First, the Brazilians had a much lower proportion of female slaves compared to the U. S who had an equal sex ratio. In Brazil, due to the lack of female slaves, they had a much lower birth rate then the U. S did. Both the death rate and suicide rate were also higher in Brazil compared to the U. S. Due to the low birthrate and the high death rate, Brazil had trouble maintaining a population resulting in having to continuously import slaves.

On the other hand, the average number of children born to an early 19th century U. S slave woman was 9. 2; this is twice as many as Brazil and the Caribbean. All these reasons are why Brazil had a much larger number of recent arrivals from Africa while the U. S had a predominately American slave born population. Also, this is why out of the millions and millions of Africans who were brought to the New World, over one-third landed in Brazil, and between 60 and 70 percent ended up in Brazil or the sugar colonies of the Caribbean.

According to Henry John Temple, the well-known British Prime Minister of the 19th century, he suggests that there were about 3,000,000 slaves in Brazil in the 19th century. Although it is hard to know the exact number, most historians agree that it was around 3,000,000, which would be about forty percent of the whole population. On the other side, in 1860, the slaves in the U. S were only about 13 percent of the entire population. Generally speaking, in Brazil slaves worked on much larger plantations than in the U. S.

Most Brazilian plantations held about 150 slaves per plantation. In the U. S, it was quite different. According to Carl Deglar, who wrote, Slavery in Brazil and the United States, he states, “Out of all the plantations in the U. S, more the half the slaves worked on units with 20 slaves or less. ” In the U.S. it would not be uncommon for the slaves to deal with their owners on a daily basis, while in Brazil some worked on plantations with hundreds and hundreds of other slaves where it would be rare to encounter your owner. When comparing Brazil and the U.

S today, the demographic differences during the days of slavery is one of the main reasons why the two countries are so different One may think that since the slaves were brought to the U. S and Brazil for similar reasons then they all were treated the same, had the same rights, and were viewed the same. Although this is by no means entirely false, there are a few specific differences in how the slaves were treated in the US compared to how the slaves were treated in Brazil. Religion among the slaves was vital for some while non-existent for others. In the U.

S, religion was discouraged for the slaves. The average white American slave owner thought there was no need to ever have a slave practice a religion. This could be due to the fact that nowhere in the Catholic Christian teachings does it say it’s acceptable to enslave and treat a fellow Christian as the owners were treating their slaves. In 1831, Virginia passed a law stating, “Slaves and free Negroes were forbidden to preach, exhort or teach in any prayer-meeting or other association for worship where slaves of different families are collected together on penalty of not more than thirty-nine lashes. In Brazil, the Christianity of a slave was viewed as quite different. Some slave owners even viewed it as essential for a slave to work on his farm. In some cases, the slaves would even have to perform a religious ritual even before they stepped foot in Brazil. Instead of being viewed as complete property, the slaves in Brazil were given a chance to practice a religion, in particular, practice the teachings of the Catholic Church. The slaves that departed from Angola, Africa to Brazil were baptized before they got on board the ship.

When they arrived in Brazil, the slaves were acknowledged as baptized and had to begin learning the prayers, doctrines, and functions of the Church. In Brazil, marriage was actually acceptable and valid. In 1711, the Constituicoes Primeiras of the Archbishopric of Bahia reaffirmed the legitimacy of marriages between slaves, and between free persons and slaves. According to the Constituicoes, masters could not prevent their slaves from marrying, nor could they separate them once they had wed. Although this may sound promising, it sounds better than it actually was.

Most slave owners did not abide by the law that you could not separate a married slave. In general, they still viewed them more as property than people. According to Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the former president of Brazil, he states, “Of the 660,000 slaves in all of Brazil in 1875, who were 14 years or older, only about 1 out of 6 was recorded as married or widowed. ” In terms of religion, it is true that the Brazilian slaves had more rights than the U. S slaves, but not by much. As you can see both the U.

S and Brazilian slave owners were more determined on making a profit by making the slaves strenuously work than anything else. Although both Brazil and U. S slave owners had complete ownership and control over their slaves, the way they treated them did differ between countries. Theoretically, both Brazil and the U. S had laws against murder, abuse, and overworking the slave. The difference is, generally speaking, in Brazil some of those laws were carried out while in the U. S, it was rare to see anyone ever defend a slave. In the U. S, the slave owner acted as the judge and jury for any issue involving his slave.

In Brazil, a slave had somewhat of a right to a jury. For instance, say a slave owner murdered his slave in the U. S. In most cases it would go unheard of, but even if it were taken to court, it would have been extremely rare if the owner were prosecuted for anything. Now, if a slave owner murdered his slave in Brazil, by law the court should have prosecuted the case as if the slave was a free man. Although it may sound that slavery in Brazil was a lot less harsh, in reality, this judicial approach in Brazil is what should have happened, but as you can guess, it rarely ever did.

Henry Koster, a famous German author, and film director, in his novel, Travels to Brazil, he states, “occasionally a cruel master was fined for maltreating his slaves but, I have never heard of punishment having been carried farther than this trifling manner of correction. ” Although by law, the Brazilians compared to the U. S had stricter laws protecting the slaves, when it comes down to the truth, in both countries the slave was viewed more as property than human, mistreating your slave was seen as mistreating your property. One of the biggest differences when comparing U.

S slavery to Brazilian slavery concerns manumission. Manumission, meaning the act of freeing a slave, was undoubtedly less common in the U. S compared to Brazil. The number proportion of free slaves in Brazil compared to the number proportion to free slaves in the U. S proves that manumission was more frequent in Brazil. In 1818, for everyone free African in Brazil, there were only three slaves. This ratio is compared to that in the U. S in 1860 when for everyone free African, there were eight slaves. By 1872, the number of free Africans in Brazil was more than double the amount that was still slaves.

The numbers show that there’s indisputable evidence to prove that manumission was more frequent in Brazil. It is important to note that Brazilian slave owners were freeing the sick and the old more so then the U. S, however, the sick and the old simply would not have been capable to produce offspring in numbers to explain a large number of free Africans in Brazil. Marvin Harris, the famous American anthropologist, along with many other historians suggests another explanation as to why there was such a higher percentage of free Africans in Brazil compared to The United States.

As stated before, in Brazil in the late 19th century, the free Africans greatly outnumbered the slaves. The big difference was that Brazil needed those free Africans in order to maintain its economy. The free black slaves in Brazil produced food, were craftsmen, and even slave catchers. They performed the tasks that slave labor was too hard to achieve and the whites thought they were too good to do. This was not the occurrence in The United States. First, the U. S was importing more food rather than growing it as Brazil did, and the food that was being produced in the U.

S was produced by whites in the South and Northwest. Also, the U. S had enough white men to perform the tasks that the free Africans in Brazil were doing. Therefore, for the U. S. there was no economic reason for the whites to turn towards manumission as Brazil did. It did not matter if you were a slave in Brazil, The United States, the Caribbean, Central America, or anywhere else, something that they all had in common was the attempt to run and become a free man. Some succeeding, some did not. In Brazil, escaped slaves formed communities like the ones they were forced to leave in their homeland.

These communities were called quilombos. Compared to the U. S, the slaves in Brazil had a greater and better chance of escape. The number of escaped slaves, the number of revolts, and the size of the quilombos were all greater in Brazil. Although there were plenty of revolts and escapes in the US, generally speaking, there were fewer participants then Brazil. In most of The United States, the climate was too cold in the winter to survive on your own compared to Brazil where the climate was reasonable. Also, Brazil was full of forests to hide in compared to the U. S where the areas were policed heavier.

The large quilombos communities in Brazil may contribute to the fact that today, in Brazil the blacks are seen as Brazilians while in certain parts of The United States, the blacks are still seen as Africans. During the days of slavery, discrimination towards blacks was clearly brutal and ruthless. The horrific and saddest result of slavery in The United States is that race prejudice still exists today. I am not saying that blacks are thought of as they were in the 18th century, but in The United States today, especially in the South, there is still discrimination towards colored people.

After slavery was abolished in The United States, by no means did that make the whites and blacks have equal rights. Even after the abolition of slavery, a black man still could not vote, give testimony in court for a white man, marry white women, hold office, and many other terrible things. Brazil, on the other hand, as writer Herbert Alexander puts it, “the race problem had been allowed to solve itself. ” For example, in the seventeenth century, one of the three main officers, when the Brazilians fought the Dutch, was Henrique Diaz, a black man.

This is something you would have never seen in The United States. The United States and Brazil were one of the last nations to abolish slavery in all of the Americas. The Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865, ended slavery in the United States. In 1888, due to international political pressure, Brazil being the last nation to do it in the Americas, finally abolished slavery. Unlike The United States, Brazil was able to abolish slavery with out catastrophic violence. In both Brazil and The United States, the horrific terror of slavery in the 16th to 19th century is something everyone would want to forget.

However, during that time period, slavery was the reason why both The United States and Brazil’s economies were both stable and on the rise. Overall, when looking into the history of slavery in both The United States and Brazil, although there are differences and similarities, the time period of slavery explains greatly to why present-day life in both unique countries is what it is. Bibliography Alexander, Herbert B. "Brazilian and United States Slavery Compared. " - Wikisource, the Free Online Library. N. p. , 2 Feb. 2001. Web. 12 Dec. 2012. Bergad, Laird W.

The Comparative Histories of Slavery in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print. Brogan, Hugh. The Penguin History of the United States of America. London: Penguin, 2001. Print. Carmody, Padraig. "Unit Three: Studying Africa through the Humanities. " Exploring Africa. N. p. , 4 Nov. 2002. Web. 12 Dec. 2012. Carter, Tom. "Race and Slavery in America. " Opinion Forum RSS. N. p. , 28 Feb. 2009. Web. 12 Dec. 2012. Davis, David Brion. Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Print. Degler, Carl N.

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