Until the latter part of the 19th century, Brazil had an extensive slavery system. Slavery was used in both nations to fill labor demands for emerging plantation economies. Sugar was the chief crop in colonial Brazil. In 1532 sugar plantations (fazendas) were established by the first permanent settlers. Six years later, Africans were imported from Angola to replace Indians as slave laborers.

There were about 100,000 slaves in Brazil in 1600 and about 600,000 in 1700. From the official census of 1798, 33.7 percent of the population was white, 14 percent was free black, and 52.8 percent was slaves. Black slaves remained the majority of the Brazilian population throughout the colonial period (prior to 1822).

From 1550 to 1690 most Brazilian slaves resided on sugar plantations in the northeast provinces of Maranhão, Pernambuco, and Bahia and in the southern province of Rio de Janeiro. They worked sugar cane, cotton, and provisions. The typical estates comprised the plantation owner (fazendeiro), his family, 15 to 20 Portuguese overseers and technicians, and about 100 slaves.

In the 1820s coffee replaced sugar as Brazil’s dominant export. This led to a shift from the northeast of Brazil to the south, primarily to São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro. After trans-Atlantic slave trade to Brazil was outlawed in 1850, peddlers brought large numbers of slaves from the northeast to the south and sold them there for exaggerated prices. By 1874 one-third of Brazil’s slaves were still in the northeast, while over one-half were in the three coffee-growing provinces.

Important dates concerning slavery in Brazil include the following:

1538	The importation of black slaves to Brazil began.
1761	Slaves were liberated in Portugal but not in Brazil.
1850	The Queiroz law prohibited the importation of African slaves to Brazil.
1867	Freedom was promised to slaves who would fight in the war.
1871	The Law of Free Birth gave freedom to all children born of slave parents.
1885	All slaves 65 years old or older were freed.
1888	Slavery was prohibited in Brazil by the Golden Law.
1890	The government ordered the destruction of many slave records.