On 8 August 1845, Britain passed the Aberdeen Act, authorizing British courts to try slave-trading vessels and crews under its interpretation of existing treaty rights. The act followed Brazil’s...
The law prohibited the importation of enslaved Africans and strengthened enforcement against the Atlantic trade. It did not free people already enslaved, and the domestic slave trade expanded as...
Brazil’s Lei Áurea formally abolished slavery, making it the last country in the Americas to do so. The law followed sustained resistance by enslaved people, mass escapes, abolitionist mobilization,...
