On the Trail of the Returned and Escapade Slave Dealers to Portugal: The “Intelligencia Saquarema” in the Service of Combating the Atlantic Slave Trade After 1850

Abstract

With the approval of Law no. 581 of September 4, 1850, also known as the Eusébio de Queirós Law, the Imperial Government began to adopt different means to repress the action of slave dealers in the national territory. This subject has been successfully treated for some time now by specialized historiography on the final years of the traffic of Africans to Brazil. Taking a slightly different path, this article turns to the means employed by the Imperial Government abroad for that same purpose. In this sense, its attention falls on the intelligence service developed by Brazilian consular agents in Portugal in the 1850s, to follow the traces of slave dealers returned and fugitives to Portugal after the tightening of anti-slave trade measures in the Empire.