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The ‘African Colonists’ of Montevideo: New Light on the Illegal Slave Trade to Rio de Janeiro and the Río de la Plata (1830–42)
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2009
Year
ColonialismLatin American StudyNew Archival EvidenceAfrican DiasporaSocial SciencesSettler ColonialismCaribbean StudiesAfrican American StudiesLatin American HistoryCultural HistoryTransnational HistorySlave Trade StudiesSlave TradeHumanitiesAfrican American SlaveryAnthropologyAbolitionismIllegal Slave TradeNew LightRío De
New archival evidence from Montevideo reveals a twofold operation that brought enslaved Africans to Rio de Janeiro in the era of the illegal slave trade. This pattern emerged after the negotiation of the only – and largely unsuccessful – Anglo-Brazilian treaty against this traffic (1826) and the independence of Uruguay from Brazil (1825), which led to the foundation of the Uruguayan state in 1830. This operation also disguised the shipment of African slaves, mainly children, to Montevideo as ‘colonists’ in order to avoid both the constitutional ban on the slave trade as well as the British cruisers patrolling the Atlantic.