📅 13 Mei 1888
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,...
📅 12 Mei 1871
On 12 May 1871, the government’s proposal on the “servile element” entered the Senate’s legislative process. The bill proposed that children born to enslaved women after enactment be declared free,...
📅 28 Sèptèmber 1871
Law no. 2,040, enacted on 28 September 1871, declared children born to enslaved women after that date legally free. Yet the law left children under the authority of their mother’s enslaver, who...
📅 7 Sèptèmber 1880
On 7 September 1880, abolitionists including Joaquim Nabuco, André Rebouças, and José do Patrocínio established the Sociedade Brasileira contra a Escravidão. The society connected parliamentary...
📅 10 Mart 1888
On 10 March 1888, João Alfredo Correia de Oliveira formed a new imperial cabinet more willing to pursue the end of slavery. The cabinet change followed years of mass abolitionist mobilization,...
📅 8 Mei 1888
On 8 May 1888, Minister of Agriculture Rodrigo Augusto da Silva presented the government’s proposal for the complete abolition of slavery to the Chamber of Deputies. The bill moved rapidly in response...
📅 10 Mei 1888
On 10 May 1888, the Chamber of Deputies approved the proposal to abolish slavery. The rapid vote followed decades of Black resistance and a late-1880s surge in abolitionist mobilization. Parliamentary...
📅 13 Mei 1888
On 13 May 1888, the Senate approved the abolition bill and Princess Regent Isabel sanctioned Law no. 3,353, the Lei Áurea. Its two brief articles ended slavery in law across Brazil. The law did not...
📅 27 April 1848
The decree abolished slavery in French colonies and possessions and declared that French citizens could not own or traffic enslaved people. Abolition was a victory shaped by enslaved people’s...
