British slave emancipation and the demand for Brazilian sugar

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of British slave emancipation on the sugar industry in the north-east of Brazil. Combining pre-existing annual data on Brazilian exports and British, French, American and Hanseatic imports with a new monthly series of imports to Liverpool and New York, I argue that the British policies following emancipation were related to a rapid increase in the demand for Brazilian sugar in the British market towards the end of mid-century. The results of an interrupted time series analysis show that the effect was particularly large following the end of apprenticeship in 1838 and the passage of the Sugar Act in 1846. I estimate that over the period 1827–1853, slave emancipation increased Brazil’s market share by around five per cent, which corresponded to between 15 and 28 per cent of the volume of Brazilian exports. A comparison with markets unaffected by such policy treatments demonstrates that these trends were confined to the British market.