On the Illegal Slave Trade to Brazil and Uruguay: The African “Colonists” of Montevideo (1832-1842)

Abstract

The case of the African “colonists” of Montevideo illustrates the rebirth
of slave trading networks between the Portuguese and Spanish of the South Atlantic. These networks, which had legally and illegally brought
slaves to the colonial Rio de la Plata, were still active in the years 1830s.
They contributed to the arrival of slaves in Rio de Janeiro just as the
British anti-slave trade policy and the Brazilian government tried to
end this traffic. This article uncovers a slave trading operation designed
by Brazilian merchants which connected Luanda, Mozambique, Rio
de Janeiro and Montevideo by the 1830s. The African “colonists” of
Montevideo were not only the last generation of slaves directly brought
from Africa to Uruguay, but also the last enslaved Africans who arrived
in any of the new republics of mainland Spanish America.