In the Name of Freedom: Slave Trade Abolition, the Law and the Brazilian Branch of the African Emigration Scheme (Brazil-British West Indies, 1830s-1850s)

Throwing new light on British abolitionism after slave emancipation, this paper addresses the Brazilian branch of the African Emigration scheme, a flow of approximately 2,550 recaptives and other recruits taken to the British West Indies between the late 1830s and the 1850s. Based on the British Foreign Office correspondence on the slave trade (FO 84), on Brazilian Ministerial Reports, Parliamentary Debates and other sources, it shows that the scheme resulted from the coordination between sectors of the British government, and served two main objectives: providing indentured labourers to the post-emancipation British West Indian colonies and undermining Brazilian slavery. Individual recruitment cases illustrate how the British expanded the meaning of "liberated African" over time to extend their protection to all those brought to Brazil after 1830, that is, a great portion of those held in slavery in the country.