Slavery, Slave Trade, Racial and Religious Discrimination
By 2015-21 with the socialist party led government, Portugal has a black female justice minister (Francisca van Dunem), a mixed race – Portuguese/Indian(Goa) prime minister (António Costa), a Lisbon mayor, who goes by the name of Fernando Medina, a secretary for local administration from gipsy extraction (Carlos Miguel), a singer and a football coach with Moorish in their names (Ana Moura and José Mourinho).
This compares with the United Kingdom, where recently Humza Yousaf, a Muslim from Pakistan origin, was nominated prime-minister of Scotland, Rishi Sunak, son of Indian immigrants, was confirmed as prime-minister of the UK, and Sadiq Khan was 2016 elected mayor of London, and re-elected 2021.[1] However, some of these descendants of immigrants supported tough measures against immigration, so-called illegal one, and, as Suella Braverman, Priti Patel, or Sajid Javid, or the leader of the Scotish Labour Party, Anas Sarwar, namely their deportation to Rwanda, in order to somewhat hypocritically please mainstream conservative British feelings, and as in the case of Suella Braverman characterized that immigration as an invasion.
This doesn’t preclude however the discussion about the racist and colonialist character of the Portuguese society having reached its peak around these days.[2]
[1] António Saraiva Lima “Yousaf e Sunak: os filhos dos emigrantes do antigo império chegaram ao topo da política britânica”, April 4, 2023
[2] For many you may start with João Pedro Marques “Pensar o passado fora da história” in Público, October 19, 2017
“The first African slaves merited a truly moving report by Zurara in his famous ‘Crónica da Guiné’ (Chronicle of Guinea), according to whom of the first 235 captives brought to Lagos (Algarve, South Portugal) from Africa 46 would have been given as property to Henry the Navigator.[1] Later still, Negroes became a fundamental reference in the daily life of the city of Lisbon. The criticisms of humanists and philosophers such as the Flemish Nicholas Clenard are a case in point. With a typically Northern European attitude, Clenard condemned the use of Negro slaves in domestic service by the Portuguese predicting the transformation of the latter into a lazy people who wanted to enjoy the benefits of the Discoveries without performing the necessary productive work are well-known, for example.”[2]
For some, Portugal was the slave trade pioneer dating back to the 15th century[3] and, with 40 (Stephen Lubkemann)[4] to 47 percent (The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade Database) of overall oceanic slave trade – estimated at ca. 5-6 million of 10 to 13 million humans – credited to its accounts, Portugal is number one in volume among the other slave trading nations, like Spain, Britain[5], France and Holland.[6]
[1] José Ramos Tinhorão “Os negros em Portugal. Uma presença silenciosa”, Caminho, Lisbon, 1988, p.40
[2] Pereira, Fernando António Baptista “Portuguese Art at the Time of the Discoveries”, CTT, 1996, p.10
[3] Perhaps this applies when setting aside previous slave trade experiences, such as the one reported by Anne Christine Larsen (“Dragons of the Sea. Ships, conquest and settlement in the Viking Age” in “Vikings. Warriors from the Sea”, Maritime Museum exhibition catalog, Lisbon, 2017, p.57-81), who describes Dublin (Ireland) as having started as a slave market sending slaves seized from monasteries to the Scandinavian countries” by the local ruling Vikings some centuries before the Atlantic slave trade even began. (p.72)
[4] As quoted by Kathleen Gomes in “Um naufrágio em África que é uma inconveniente história portuguesa”, Público, July 2, 2015
[5] “Of the more than 6m enslaved Africans transported across the Atlantic, it is thought that 2.5m were packed into British ships.” (The Economist Nov.14, 2020)
[6] João Pedro Marques (“Os sons do silêncio: o Portugal de Oitocentos e a abolição do tráfico de escravos” Instituto de Ciências Sociais, 1999, p.55) mentions then current estimates of Portugal being responsible for circa 25% of the Transatlantic slave trade by the end of the 18th century. This book gives a thorough rendition of the series of conflicts between Portugal and the United Kingdom around the slave trade and slavery abolition struggles. For a first hand version by one of the directely involved parties you may also read Marquis of Sá da Bandeira’s point of view in his “O tráfico da escravatura e o bill de Lord Palmerston”, Ulmeiro, 1997 (1839), where the conflict is portrayed as an overbearing power – the UK – trying to use the abolitionist movement moral upperhand and superior naval power to submit a struggling decaying country as Portugal, where for some observers, as the then UK ambassador in Lisbon, slave dealers were practically the only capitalists around (Marques, opus cit p.341).
Justin Marozzi “estimates that between 12 and 15mn people were enslaved [in the Islamic world] over the course of 13 centuries – a traffic comparable to the Atlantic slave trade, but one which has had far less attention from historians.”[1]
[1] “Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World”, Allen Lane, 2025 (as mentioned by Gerard Russell in his book review in the Financial Times, July 31, 2025)
Justin Marozzi “estimates that between 12 and 15mn people were enslaved [in the Islamic world] over the course of 13 centuries – a traffic comparable to the Atlantic slave trade, but one which has had far less attention from historians.”[1]
[1] “Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World”, Allen Lane, 2025 (as mentioned by Gerard Russell in his book review in the Financial Times, July 31, 2025)
2007 marked the bicentennial of Britain’s[1] banning of the slave trade and in 1807-8 the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited.
On Jan. 31, 1865, the House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery. (NYT January 31, 2008)
After 1850 (or 1830?) the importation of slaves was prohibited in independent Brazil, which was the last western country to abolish slavery in 1888. (Wikipedia as of November 27, 2007)
In the begin of the 20th century a polemic unfolded between some abolitionists, as William Cadbury, and the Portuguese authorities regarding the alleged slave like conditions of cocoa plantation workers on the islands of S. Tomé and Príncipe, on the Guinea golf of west Africa.
At that time around one sixth of world consumption of cacao was supplied by these plantations. (Braga, Isabel M. R. Mendes Drumond “A herança das Américas em Portugal”, CTT Correios, 2007, p.176) The islands were “inspected” by English abolitionists between 1905 and 1908 and the target of a condemning report authored by William Cadbury and published in 1910.
“From the trade’s beginning in the 16th century to its conclusion in the 19th, slave merchants brought the vast majority of enslaved Africans to two places: the Caribbean and Brazil. Of the more than 10 million enslaved Africans to eventually reach the Western Hemisphere, just 388,747—less than 4 percent of the total—came to North America. This was dwarfed by the 1.3 million brought to Spanish Central America, the 4 million brought to British, French, Dutch, and Danish holdings in the Caribbean, and the 4.8 million brought to Brazil.” (Kahn & Bouie 2015)[2]
“As the first European states with a major presence in the New World, Portugal and Spain dominate the opening century of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, sending hundreds of thousands of enslaved people to their holdings in Central and South America and the Caribbean. The Portuguese role doesn’t wane and increases through the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, as Portugal brings millions of enslaved Africans to the Americas.” (Kahn & Bouie 2015) “In the final decades of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Portugal reclaims its status as the leading slavers, sending 1.3 million people to the Western Hemisphere, and mostly to Brazil.” (Kahn & Bouie 2015) “By the conclusion of the trans-Atlantic slave trade at the end of the 19th century, Europeans had enslaved and transported more than 12.5 million Africans. At least 2 million, historians estimate, didn’t survive the journey.” (Kahn & Bouie 2015)
As one would expect, the role of Portugal in slavery and slave trade, as in their abolition, is widely disputed also among Portuguese authors, as exemplified in the recent polemic unfolded in the daily newspaper Público.[3] Some of these authors, like Jerónimo & Monteiro assert that slavery and slave work in the colonies have far into the mid-20th century been replaced by forced labour, only officially (de jure) abolished in the year of 1962, but 1972 still under scrutiny by the World Labour Organization (OIT).
At least Portuguese taxpayers were not called for compensating slave owners for releasing their slaves as the British taxpayers were, – including descendants of the enslaved – “who ended up paying the equivalent of £17bn in compensation to former slave owners, loans for which have only recently been paid off.[4] The enslaved and their successors received nothing, in terms of money or apology.”[5]
[1] “The £20m in compensation that was eventually paid by the British government to slavers for the loss of their human property was a vast sum, equating to 40% of the state’s annual expenditure at the time. Until the banking bail-out of 2008, it was the largest specific payout in British history; the loan it required was paid off only in 2015. The money provided the seed capital for mines, banks, railways and more. Britain’s liberal, free-trade empire was, in part, built on human bondage.” (The Economist Nov.14, 2020)
[2] Kahn, Andrew & Jamelle Bouie “The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes”, Slate, June 25, 2015
[3] Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo & José Pedro Monteiro “Um ‘humanismo’ nada excepcional”, and João Pedro Marques “Marcelo e a escravatura”, both in Público April 18, 2017
[4] “The payments only ended in 2015. By the late 17th century, we see the British coming to dominate the slave trade, having overtaken the Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch. Only in the 1810s did the British government take the unprecedented step of paying compensation to Spain, Portugal and some West African states to solicit their cooperation in the suppression of the slave trade. The attempt failed, however, as Spain and Portugal pocketed British money and continued their slave trading until the later 19th century. Other slave-owning states, including France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Brazil, would follow the British example of compensated emancipation in the coming decades. But the compensation that Britain paid to its slave owners was by far the most generous.” Kris Manjapra “When will Britain face up to its crimes against humanity”, in The Guardian, March 29, 2018
[5] Philippe Sands “Monumental injustice” in The Financial Times, September 1, 2021
Related to slavery, even if not identical, is the question of racial discrimination, racism, and racial prejudice.
Francisco Bethencourt defines racism as a prejudice regarding ethnic descendent, combined with discriminatory action, which would perfectly apply to the case of persecution of New-Christian by the inquisition.[1]
Writing in the sixties and confronting the then authoritarian regime’s formal premise of equality between races, Charles Boxer blames “modern Portuguese writers who claim that their compatriots never had any feeling of colour prejudice or of discrimination against the African Negro, unaccountably ignore the obvious fact that one race cannot systematically enslave members of another on a large scale for over three centuries without acquiring a conscious or unconscious feeling of racial superiority.”[2]
Referring mainly to Japan, Charles Boxer mentions that “[t]he principal local difficulty was (so he [the Italian Jesuit Father AlessandroValignano, arrived for the first time in Japan in July, 1579, which after some long visits he finally left in January 1603] said) the attitude of the Portuguese, who treated all Asiatic races with contempt, and termed even highly cultivated peoples like the Chinese and Japanese, ‘niggers’. This is rather surprising, for modern Portuguese writers are never tired of extolling their compatriots’ disregard of the colour bar, and they point proudly to Brazil as the classic example of what can be achieved by an enlightened policy in this respect. There is obviously a great deal of truth in this; but a long study of Portuguese colonial history has enabled me to appreciate that Valignano’s charges were by no means unfounded, if care is taken to distinguish between the enlightened official policy of the Portuguese monarchs and the more or less instinctive racial reactions of many of their subjects.”[3]
Race and religion could sometimes get confused: “The policy of the Portuguese Crown towards the colour-bar in the Estado da India was not always clear and consistent, but on the whole the Portuguese kings took the line that religion and not colour should be the criterion for Portuguese citizenship, and that all Asian converts to Christianity should be treated as the equals of their Portuguese co-religionists.” (Boxer, 1963, p.70) Boxer concludes, however that “what is certain, is that racial discrimination in favour of the European-born Portuguese, if not always accepted in theory, was widely and continuously exercised in practice by the great majority of overseas viceroys and governors.” (ibidem p.71) Boxer acknowledges the legislative attempts against discrimination, “but for practical purposes, it can be said that the racial toleration and (relative) absence of a colour-bar of which the present-day Portuguese so proudly boast, … (is) in itself no mean achievement; but it does not square in historical fact with the claim so often made by and on behalf of the Portuguese that they never had the slightest idea of racial superiority or of discrimination against their subject peoples.” (ibidem p.84)
Charles Boxer gives us his assessment: “Pombal’s dictatorial abolition of the colour-bar against Brazilian Amerindians and Christian Asian vassals of the Portuguese Crown, and the grant of full civil rights which was simultaneously bestowed on them, were not extended in anything like the same measure to persons of Negro blood. … He did indeed abolish Negro slavery in Portugal in the year 1761, but on economic rather than on humanitarian or egalitarian grounds, as the wording of the decree makes clear. In short, just as the founding fathers of the United States were not thinking of their Negro slaves when they enunciated the inalienable right of every man to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’, nor was Pombal thinking of the Negro slaves in Brazil when he condemned in such forthright terms any form of discrimination against the Amerindians.
The position of the Negro slave in Brazil, as elsewhere, hardly needs stressing here. Suffice it to say that his (or her) existence was usually ‘nasty, brutish, and short’ the average life of a slave on the plantations or in the mines being estimated at from seven to ten years. The household slaves were usually, though not invariably, a good deal better off than the field-hands and the miners. Those of the Negresses who were favoured with their masters’ attentions might aspire to lead an enviable life – unless there was a white mistress to wreak a jealous and sadistic revenge on them. Freed slaves and their descendants, of whom there were large and steadily increasing numbers, were better off than slaves in most ways, but they were still discriminated against in law. They enjoyed fewer rights than their white fellow-citizens, and the punishment inflicted on them was usually more severe for an identical offence.” (ibidem p.100-101) “The Portuguese were, and are, no exception to this rule; and if I have dwelt in these lectures on the dark rather than on the bright side of Portuguese colonization in past centuries, it has not been with object of suggesting that they behaved worse than other European nations would have done in the prevailing circumstances.” (ibidem p.121-2) “Moreover, if slaves in Brazil were treated just as harshly as they were in the English, French, and Dutch West-Indian colonies, it remains true that their chances of manumission were greater; and the Black Brotherhoods of Our Lady of the Rosary provided them with a source of aid and comfort which was lacking in the sugar-colonies of the Northern European powers.” (ibidem p.123)
“Contrary to what is often asserted, the Portuguese did not seek to impose Roman Catholic Christianity at the point of the sword; but they did seek to foster their religion through coercive and discriminatory legislation. The enforcement of these laws in favour of Roman Catholic Christianity inevitably varied widely in time and place. The enactment which gave the most offence was that all orphan children should be taken from their relations and brought up in Christian institutions or households. Since any child whose father had died was classified as an orphan, even if the mother was still alive, this law naturally caused many family tragedies and much hardship. The first Ecclesiastical Council which was celebrated at Goa in 1567 also enacted that all Christians, whether white or coloured, should have no social contacts with Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, or with Gentiles in general. Intermarriage with adherents of these religions was, of course, forbidden; and all contacts with non-Christians were to be limited to essential business dealings only. It need hardly be said that this injunction to what is nowadays termed apartheid was largely ignored in practice, though successive ecclesiastical councils held at Goa in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries urged the colonial government to implement the decision of 1567.
These ecclesiastical councils likewise stressed the desirability of government posts and pickings being given to native Christians rather than to Hindus and Muslims. This was indeed the Crown’s policy, as exemplified by numerous edicts; but the frequency with which these edicts were issued indicates how ill they were often observed. The tax-farmers and collectors for long remained principally Hindus in Portuguese India, in much the same way as Jews had filled the parallel posts in Europe, and for the same basic reason – their superior financial acumen and abilities. On the other hand, the edicts against toleration of Hindu and Buddhist priests, and of Muslim Imams and Mullahs, and against the use of the sacred books of these religions, were usually strictly enforced. Similarly, temples, shrines, mosques and sacred places were often destroyed by the Portuguese, so that the practice of any religion other than the Roman Catholic Christianity became very difficult, and at times impossible, on Portuguese colonial soil. This undoubtedly aided the process of converting the local inhabitants to Christianity, and goes far to account for those ‘pockets’ of Roman Catholic communities which have survived till to-day in some regions of the west coast of India, Ceylon, and Malacca.” (Boxer 1961, p.37-39)[4] A community of scarcely thousand descendants of Portuguese was still on record a couple of decades ago and dwelling in the so-called Portuguese Quarter of Malaca, where most members still recently spoke a corrupted dialect of Portuguese origin called papyá Kristang. Other mixed race descendents of Portuguese origin had spread through the region. [5]
“The oft-made claim that the Portuguese had no colour-bar cannot be substantiated. The most that can truthfully be said is that in this respect they were usually more liberal in practice than their Dutch, English, and French successors.” (Boxer 1961, p.42)
“The policy of the Portuguese Crown on the colour-bar was not always clear and consistent, but on the whole the Portuguese kings took the line that religion and not colour should be the criterion for full Portuguese citizenship, and that all Asian converts to Christianity should be treated as the equals of their Portuguese co-religionists. This indulgence does not seem to have been extended either to Amerindians or to Negroes, although the former were legally prohibited from being enslaved, save under exceptional circumstances and strict safeguards. Slavery, indeed, was one of the main pillars of the Lusitanian empire. The sugar plantations of Brazil, the household labour of the Portuguese settlers in three continents, and even to some extent the defence of their settlements, depended mainly on the strong right arms of their (principally African) slaves.” (Boxer 1961, p.43-44)
“Whatever the drawbacks of miscegenation as practised by the Portuguese, the offspring of these unions, whether legitimate or otherwise, did remain loyal to the Portuguese Crown and to the Roman Catholic religion, often for long after the Portuguese themselves had gone. It was also mainly through the half-caste and native women that the Portuguese adopted or adapted so many Asian, African and Amerindian habits or usages, in such things as household management, cooking, and modifications of dress and diet.” (Boxer 1961, p.61)
“As regards the colour-bar, Pombal’s decrees in some ways anticipated the ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’ slogan of the French Revolution. He abolished slavery in Portugal itself – admittedly largely because it was regarded askance in France and England. He promulgated the most drastic decree ordaining that the Asian subjects of the Portuguese crown should be given the same status as white persons who were born in Portugal, on the grounds that ‘His majesty does not distinguish between vassals by their colour, but by their merits’. Similar decrees were not promulgated in respect of the African colonies, as the Negroes were still regarded as being inferior; but in regard to the Amerindians of Brazil, Pombal went even further. He not only abolished (on paper) the last vestiges of forced labour, but he earnestly encouraged Portuguese settlers of both sexes to intermarry with the Amerindians, regardless of the latter’s extremely primitive culture.
Pombal’s efforts to smash the colour-bar in India and Brazil (Negroes excepted) were only partially successful. They were not welcomed by most colonial governors and high officials; and though these men did not venture to oppose the ruthless dictator during his lifetime, things soon reverted to the status quo ante after his death. (Boxer 1961, p.83)
“Mulattos, Blacks and various peoples of mixed backgrounds made up many of the Luso-Brazilian forces at this time; the original leader of the revolt against the Dutch was João Fernandes Viera, son of a Mulata prostitute and a Madeira Fidalgo; Camarão, a Native American, and Henrique Dias, a Black, were among their best regimental commanders.”[6]
“The loss of ‘Nederland Brazil’ was, according to C. R. Boxer, particularly hard for the Dutch because they had been defeated largely by an army of color, and the Portuguese possession of the sugar trade in Brazil was qualified by improved methods of cultivating sugar and grinding cane that Luso-Brazilian Jews probably helped to introduce in the English and French West Indies while the Dutch occupied Pernambuco.”[7]
[1] Francisco Bethencourt “1536. A Inquisição chega a Portugal”, in Carlos Fiolhais et al (ed.), “História Global de Portugal”, Temas e Debates, Lisboa, 2020, p.376
[2] “Racial Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire 1415-1825”, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963, p.56
[3] Charles R. Boxer “The Christian Century in Japan 1549-1650”, Carcanet, Manchester, 1993 (1951), p.84-5
[4] Boxer, Charles Ralph “Four Centuries of Portuguese Expansion, 1415-1825”, Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg, 1961
[5] João Pedro de Campos Guimarães & José Maria Cabral Ferreira “O Bairro Português de Malaca” Afrontamento, 1996, p.37 & 66
[6] Jonathan Hart “Comparing Empires. European Colonialism from Portuguese Expansion to the Spanish-Amwrican War”, Palgrave Macmillan, N. Y., 2008 (2003), p.76
[7] ibidem, p.77
The casados, or "married men"
It looks pertinent to me to bring on this subject, that may be held as illustrative of the position of at least some Portuguese towards racial miscegenation.
“With peace concluded, in 1514 Afonso [de Albuquerque, viceroy of Portuguese India] devoted himself to governing Goa and receiving embassies from Indian governors, strengthening the city and encouraging marriages of Portuguese men and local women. At that time, Portuguese women were barred from traveling overseas in order to maintain discipline among the men on board the ships.[1] In 1511 under a policy which Afonso promulgated, the Portuguese government encouraged their explorers to marry local women. To promote settlement, the King of Portugal granted freeman status and exemption from Crown taxes to Portuguese men (known as casados, or “married men”) who ventured overseas and married local women. With Afonso’s encouragement, mixed marriages flourished, giving birth to Portuguese-Indians or mestiços. He appointed local people for positions in the Portuguese administration and did not interfere with local traditions (except “sati“, the practice of immolating widows, which he banned).” (From Wikipedia as accessed August 31, 2025)
Unfortunately, no representative quantitative data are available on this matter – at least to my knowledge. So, if you know any pertinent information, you are most welcome to share it with me.
[1] On this subject you may consider “Mulheres a bordo! A face pouco conhecida da expansão ortuguesa” by Mariana Caldeira Gonçalves, Parsifal, 2025
