-
Portuguese arrived in Brazil.
-
African slaves were brought into Brazil.
-
The crown established a strict bureaucracy to fight off French and British incursions into Brazil.
-
By the mid- 1500s sugar plantations began to spring up in the Northeast.
-
In the 1690s, gold was found in Minas Gerais, tripling the demand for slaves; of the estimated 1.7 million slaves brought into Brazil, about 1 million went to the gold mines and diamond fields.
-
In the 1830s, Britain's Royal Navy began to intercept slave ships headed for Brazil, in order to free the enslaved Africans.
-
Britain had outlawed slavery in the British colonies, making it difficult to compete with the slave economies of Brazil and Cuba.
-
In 1871, Brazil passed the "Law of the Free Womb," freeing from that time forward the children born of slaves.
-
In 1885, Brazil passed the Sexagenarian Law, freeing slaves over sixty-five years of age, though few slaves reached that age.
-
Abolitionment of slavery in 1888