BRAZIL 225
their roles seriously in this parody of democ-
racy because of the personal advantage they
derive therefrom. Suppress the subsidies, force
them to stop using their positions for personal
and family ends, and no one who had any-
thing else to do would waste his time in such
shadow boxing.The surface stability of Brazilian political life
in the decades after 1850 rested on the prosper-
ity of the coffee-growing zone of Rio de Janeiro,
São Paulo, and Minas Gerais, itself the product
of growing demand and good prices for Brazilian
coffee. But the sugar-growing northeast and its
plantation society continued to decline because of
exhausted soil, archaic techniques, and competi-
tion from foreign sugars.
The crisis of the northeast grew more acute
as a result of English pressure on Brazil to enforce
the Anglo-Brazilian treaty banning the importa-
tion of slaves into Brazil after November 7, 1831.
Before 1850 this treaty was never effectively en-
forced; more than fi fty thousand slaves a year were
brought to Brazil during the 1840s. In 1849 and
1850, however, the British government pressured
Brazil to pass the Queiroz anti-slave-trade law and
instructed its warships to enter Brazilian territorial
waters if necessary to destroy Brazilian slave ships.
By the middle 1850s, the importation of slaves had
virtually ended.
Abolition of the slave trade had major conse-
quences. Because of the high mortality among
slaves due to poor food, harsh working conditions,
and other negative factors, natural reproduction
could not maintain the slave population, which
assured the slave system’s eventual demise. The
end of the slave trade created a serious labor short-
age, with large numbers of slaves moving from the
north to the south because of the coffee planters’
greater capacity to compete for slave labor. This
movement aggravated the imbalance between the
declining north and the prosperous south-central
zone. By the 1860s, a growing number of Brazil-
ians had become convinced that slavery brought
serious discredit to Brazil and must be ended. The
abolition of slavery in the United States as a result
of the Civil War, which left Brazil and the Spanish
colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico the only slave-
holding areas in the Western Hemisphere, sharp-
ened sensitivity to the problem. The Paraguayan
War also promoted the cause of emancipation. In
an effort to fi ll the gaps caused by heavy losses at
the front, a decree was issued granting freedom to
government-owned slaves who agreed to join the
army, and some private slave owners followed the
offi cial example.
Criticism of slavery was increasingly joined
with criticism of the emperor, who was censured
for his cautious posture on slavery. Although the
monarchy believed it might survive the abolition
of slavery, it greatly feared the growing indepen-
dent organizations of “blacks, mulattos, caboclos,
etc.” that accompanied abolitionism. In the words
of a royal councilor, Pimenta Bueno, “Political ex-
perience teaches us that the best rule is not to talk
about this. If one allows the principle to exist, then
it will develop, and there will be consequences.
Distinctions or divisions based on caste are always
bad; homogeneity, if not real at least supposed, is
the desired goal of nationalities.” This idea epito-
mized Brazil’s nineteenth-century struggles and
ultimately led historians like Sidney Chalhoub to
conclude that they bequeathed a legacy of political
exclusion for peoples of African descent.
Alongside the antislavery movement there
arose a nascent republican movement. In 1869 the
Reform Club, a group of militant Liberals, issued a
manifesto demanding restrictions on the powers of
the emperor and the grant of freedom to the new-
born children of slaves. The crisis of slavery was
fast becoming a crisis of the Brazilian Empire.THE ANTISLAVERY MOVEMENT
From the close of the Paraguayan War (1870),
the slavery question surged forward, becoming
the dominant issue in Brazilian political life. Dom
Pedro, personally opposed to slavery, was caught
in a crossfi re between slave owners who were deter-
mined to postpone the inevitable as long as possible
and a growing number of liberal leaders, intellec-
tuals, urban middle-class groups, and free people