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Angola Abolition of the Slave Trade
In the early 1830s, the Portuguese government appointed
a
progressive prime minister, the Marquês de Sá da Bandeira,
whose
most important reform was the abolition of the slave trade
in 1836.
The decree, however, could not be enforced adequately, and
it took
Britain's Royal Navy to put an end to the activity in the
middle of
the nineteenth century.
In 1858 slavery was legally abolished in Angola.
Government
slaves had already been freed in 1854, but the 1858
proclamation
declared that all slavery should cease by 1878.
Legislation was
passed to compensate owners and to care for the freed
people. But
many of the colonists found ways to circumvent the decree,
so that
the actual conditions of labor did not change
significantly.
Data as of February 1989
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