The return of slaving in the middle of the nineteenth century

Abstract

In the final quarter of the nineteenth century, Portugal and other European countries took part in the conquest and occupation of the African hinterland and based their exploitation of the new territories on forms of exploiting labour which were very close to slavery - which had supposedly been abolished. This article shows how this paradox arose in the decades of the 1850s and 60s, and how it was the outcome of changes in the way the Western peoples came to see the Negro and the problem of labour in the tropics.