How it unfolded
- 1807The transatlantic slave trade is banned. Slavery itself remains legal: only the import of new people is prohibited.
- 1833Slavery is abolished in British territories, with compensation and a transitional period of forced labor.
- 1850sSmuggling continues for decades. Anti-slavery squadrons intercept some ships, while the rest get through.
- 1888Brazil abolishes slavery, becoming the last country in the Western Hemisphere to do so. Eighty years have passed since the first ban on the slave trade.
The gap between the first and last dates is the main fact of this story. Banning the slave trade did not free anyone already enslaved, and entire generations were born and died in the years between the two decisions.
In some places, the ban on imports made conditions worse. If no new people could be brought in, the value of those already enslaved rose, along with control over them and the domestic slave trade.
What replaced slave labor
Plantations adopted a contract labor system: people were brought from India and China for several years in exchange for passage and housing. Formally, it was a contract; in practice, it meant debt, a one-way journey and no way to leave before the term ended.
More than a million people passed through this system over several decades. Their descendants make up a significant share of the populations of the Caribbean islands, Mauritius, Fiji and several South American countries.
Africa's economy also changed. Instead of exporting people, European companies shifted to exporting palm oil, rubber and other goods, while forced labor in Africa continued for a long time.
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Sources
- The ban on the transatlantic slave trade and the abolition of slavery were different measures, separated by decades
- after abolition, plantations widely used contract workers from Asia, while illegal transport continued into the second half of the 19th century