Brazil’s slavery was distinctly Portuguese—shaped over centuries by African interactions, Arabic vocabulary, and a legal framework that commonly allowed manumission.
This month, as I discussed my article “Transatlantic Slavery and Africa’s Influence on Europe” with Spanish speakers, I realized that the Portuguese term alforria (manumission) does not exist in Spanish. I replaced this Arabic-derived word with the Latin-origin manumisión, which was understood. Still, since that word is infrequent in use, my interlocutor preferred libertad (freedom) when translating alforria. Reflecting now, I see Spanish does have related terms: alhorría and ahorría. Yet, checking Wikipedia entries highlights how these institutions differ in each language: the Portuguese article on alforria centers on Brazil, whereas the Spanish entry for manumisión is about Ancient Rome. English uses manumission broadly, covering various contexts like ancient Greece and Rome, Peru, and the U.S.
Every Brazilian, literate or not, knows alforria. There’s even a song emphasizing that for a poet, only three things truly matter in this fleeting world: guitar, “forria” (freedom), and love—not money. This altered form of alforria substitutes for liberdade (freedom), a word that seems obvious and natural. The absence of a precise term among Spanish speakers suggests the institution held less importance in Portuguese America compared to Spanish America.
Among the many factors explaining this, one stands out: Portuguese America depended far more on African labor, while Spanish America relied heavily on Amerindian labor. The 1537 papal bull Sublimis Deus rendered enslaving Amerindians and confiscating their property nearly illegal. Though illegal enslavement and labor exploitation did happen, legally recognized slavery under both crowns focused on Africans. Where legal slavery was scarce, manumission was correspondingly rare.
Why does Portuguese include more Arabisms? Another key Arabic term in the history of slavery is mameluco. In Arabic, mamluk referred to a “slave” or “owned man,” specifically slave soldiers serving as royal guards. However, in early Brazilian history, mameluco described the children of Amerindian women and Portuguese men. The Royal Spanish Academy’s entry for mameluco makes no mention of American usage. Historian Eduardo França Paiva observes: “It is interesting to note that this term was uncommon in Spanish American territories at the time, despite records of mamluks besieging Cordova in the late 13th century. This likely reflects the experiences of Portuguese officials, navigators, merchants, and Jesuits in Eastern and African regions under Muslim control.” (Como ensinar história da escravidão?, pp. 93–94).
I believe this points to the key reason behind such linguistic overlap: at the dawn of modernity, Portugal engaged deeply with the Islamic slaveholding realms of the Old World, transferring their institutions westward. This fusion revived ancient Roman practices like manumission to accommodate these systems. The origin of Portuguese Arabic loanwords absent in Spain is better traced to the Renaissance era than to the medieval Umayyad Caliphate.
When reflecting on the Age of Discovery, the focus commonly falls on the Americas and Spain’s 1492 moment. Yet, earlier crucial events deserve attention. In 1336, during the Middle Ages, Portugal claimed the discovery of the Canary Islands near Morocco—marking a turning point for its African ambitions, which persisted until Salazar’s rule in the 20th century. Less than a century later, in 1415, Portugal seized Ceuta in Morocco. The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) validated Portuguese claims to North African lands, which they held until 1578, when the Battle of Alcácer Quibir cost King Sebastian his life. Then, the conquest spirit echoed Crusades ideals: a Catholic warrior-king aiming to subjugate former, now infidel, rulers.
Another landmark occurred in 1425 when Portugal colonized Madeira, an uninhabited island close to Morocco. There, the Portuguese implemented the captaincy system for sugar cultivation, applying Arab agricultural techniques. The Crown sold exploitation rights to private agents, receiving taxes in return. Arabs had utilized slaves extensively, largely from Sub-Saharan Africa—a land virtually unknown to Europeans then. Not entirely unknown, however: Europeans knew of Ethiopia and its black inhabitants through biblical references, and the Portuguese searched for the mythical Land of Prester John, believed besieged by Moors. To reach it, they needed to circumnavigate an immense, unknown continent, sailing the Atlantic coast to enter the Indian Ocean and secure spices directly. Another milestone in the Atlantic came in 1460 with the discovery of the uninhabited Cape Verde archipelago, near today’s Senegal, establishing a Portuguese base near Sub-Saharan Africa.
Almost two decades later, in 1479, Spain recognized Portugal’s exclusive rights to African coastal trade in the Treaty of Alcáçovas. This agreement incentivized Portugal to engage with pagan African societies practicing slavery like Muslim states. In 1483, Portuguese navigator Diogo Cão explored the Congo River, Africa’s second-largest, and by 1491 he reached the Kingdom of Kongo (modern Angola) with missionaries. The Manikongo, supreme leader, was baptized as King John I of Kongo. By the time Columbus reached the Americas on October 12, 1492, all these developments had already unfolded.
In Brazil, unlike in other places, the American discovery receives little focus or celebration. For Brazilians, 1500 is crucial—the year Cabral supposedly veered off course en route to India and found Brazil, already allotted to Portugal under the Treaty of Tordesillas. After this “discovery,” Portugal largely ignored the territory for over thirty years, as no precious metals were found and indigenous peoples lived primitively, unlike the wealthy Aztec Empire. Pirate Bretons showed interest, trading metal goods for brazilwood from natives—the wood used for red dye in Europe.
By 1506, while Brazil remained vulnerable to pirates, King Alphonsus I of Kongo had a vision of Saint James and the Virgin Mary aiding him in a fight for power. In 1510, the devout monarch wrote to his Portuguese counterpart, the less pious John III, denouncing greedy Portuguese slave traders who captured free men and sold them, causing a population crisis in Kongo. However, the letter failed to resolve the issue. This episode resembles journalistic folklore suggesting Europeans abducted people from an Eden-like Africa. It is crucial to stress that black Africans then accepted slavery, and Alphonsus I’s appeals did not reflect abolitionist views. Also contentious is whether Europeans involved were “white men” or Marrano Jews; although not exclusively so, their participation in the slave trade is undeniable.
Continuing chronologically, in 1534 John III finally shaped Brazil’s future by implementing Madeira’s captaincy system to cultivate sugarcane, produce sugar, collect taxes, expel French pirates, and evangelize the indigenous populations. The labor force for sugar production was, naturally, sourced from Africa.
In 1580, after the death of King Sebastian triggered a succession crisis, Portugal came under Spanish rule. To conclude this overview, I cite historian Eduardo França Paiva: “During the early modern period, the Portuguese dominated Atlantic African slave trade. Initially, slaves were brought to Lisbon to supply markets like Andalusia. […] Nearly a century after the Treaty of Alcáçovas (1479), Portugal controlled Spanish contracts for the slave trade, known as asientos. They supplied the growing demand for African slaves in Spanish America between 1595 and 1640—until the Portuguese Crown’s restoration […], which ended Portugal’s asientos monopoly. Only then did the Atlantic African slave trade shift decisively toward Portuguese America, rapidly becoming the Western world’s premier slave market.” (op. cit., pp. 16–17)
Thus, Brazil’s massive influx of Africans and rise as a premier slave-trading center were direct results of Portugal’s independence from Spain. This prompts questions about how slavery differed under both crowns and why the trade so sharply expanded in Brazil—a complex issue warranting a detailed comparative study beyond the scope of this historical overview.
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