“Princely Offspring of Braganza”: The “Brazil Plan” for Portugal and the Miscarriage of British Abolition, 1806–1815

Abstract

JOSELYN M. ALMEIDA “Princely Offspring of Braganza”: The “Brazil Plan” for Portugal and the Miscarriage ofBritish Abolition, 1806-1815 1. Introduction T he world anti-slavery convention in 1840 assembled veterans of Britain’s abolitionist movement like Thomas Clarkson, who despite se­ rious illness and personal tragedy continued to work on behalfof “the great cause” at age 81;1 younger, more radical recruits like David Turnbull, who in 1843 became implicated in the Escalera uprising of enslaved AfroCubans ; and society adherents like Lady Byron. Works like Thomas Bux­ ton’s The African Slave Trade and the Remedy for It (1840) globalized the goals of the movement, setting its agenda for the rest of the nineteenth century. In a review of Buxton’s book, however, Lord Henry Brougham, the formidable lawyer, politician, and intellectual who co-founded the Ed­ inburgh Review, and who in 1840 was, as Clarkson noted, “one ofthe oldest abolitionists alive except myself,”2 felt the need to defend the abolitionists’ record.3 Despite the abolition of slavery in British Atlantic colonies, Brougham lamented the exponential expansion of the slave trade in the South Atlantic. Numbers tell the story: in 1807, 9,689 enslaved persons i. Thomas Clarkson to Henry Brougham, Postmarked July 12, 1838. Brougham Papers, Document 1058, University College London. 2. Clarkson to Brougham, July 12, 1838. 3. I am indebted to the late and dearly missed historian Christopher Schmidt-Nowara (1966—2015) for his generous friendship and the comments he made on this manuscript. I am also grateful to Christine Yao and the 19th Century American Reading Group at Cornell University for the invitation to present a version of this paper at the Global 19th Century Day Conference. SiR, 56 (Spring 2017) 55 56 JOSELYN M. ALMEIDA were disembarked in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; by 1810, the number had in­ creased 100% to 18,677. In 1829, the number of enslaved persons trafficked through Rio had grown by 500% to 47,630.4 Brougham traced the failure of British abolitionist policy in the South Atlantic to the Congress ofVienna, in which “Those who could dictate, or nearly dictate the terms of that peace, were wholly without an interest in the slave question.” He wrote: It is painful to reflect on the opportunity which was lost in 1814, and still more in 1815, and which is not likely ever to be again presented, of obtaining the concurrence of the different powers. . . . Spain and Portugal were alone deeply concerned in maintaining it, and were more completely at the mercy of Allies who brought the war to a suc­ cessful termination, than any dynasties nominally independent ever were in modern times. . . . Had the Congress foreseen that upwards of two hundred thousand Africans yearly would be carried into slavery by the miscreants who use the flag of these two feeble powers, it would have assuredly come to a resolution, that slave trading is a crime against the law of nations, and should be treated as a piratical offense.5 In the two hundred years of British annals on the victory over Napoleon, which placed Britain at the center of the new European order, Brougham’s reflection stands out for its construction of post-Waterloo not as victory, but as an “opportunity which was lost.” A doleful tone prevails throughout instead of the usual panegyric: in retrospect, he finds it “painful to reflect,” and depicts Waterloo clinically as the “successful termination” of war. More significantly, by framing 1814-1815 as a lost opportunity, Brougham posits an unacknowledged intersection between the Peninsular War, the Congress ofVienna, and the continuation of Atlantic Slavery in the second half of the nineteenth century.6 4. Manolo Garcia Florentine), Em Costas Negras: Uina Historia do Trafico Atldntico de Escravos entre a Africa e o Rio deJaneiro Secnlos XVIII e XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo National, 1995), 59- Enslaved persons destined for Brazil were often taken from West Africa, Angola, Congo, West Central Africa, and represented twenty ethnic groups. The slave market in Rio served as a gateway to other parts of Brazil; “Once a slave reached the slave market of Rio, whether from Africa or from the northeast, there were no guarantees that he or...