The Issue of the End of the Slave Trade in Portugal

Contributions from the Theory of Gradual Institutional Change

Abstract

 The paper seeks to explain why the end of the slave trade in the Portuguese colonies south of the Ecuador was actually implemented through a treaty signed between Portugal and England six years after Marquis de Sá da Bandeira had signed a decree abolishing the slave trade, and also after the establishment of an authoritarian government that set a new period of validity of the Constitutional Charter of 1826. To that end, we apply the theory of gradual institutional change. We conclude that the particularities of the Portuguese political scenario in the first half of the 19th century, the institutional architecture of the Portuguese liberalism at the time, and the absence of actors with veto power, led to a context in which coups d’état, pronouncements and political violence became instruments of alternation in power. So the institutional change that allowed the conclusion of an agreement that had been negotiated for decades by Portugal is identified as an institutional change by substitution. It was carried out by a member of the so-called setembrismo movement led by a liberal left group that established a centralized and more moderate government, and which is held responsible for laying the foundations of the new Portuguese State.