Anti-Slave-Trade Sovereignty: The Auditoria Geral da Marinha and Brazil’s Legal Geography

This paper argues that slave-trade abolition strengthened Brazilian state sovereignty in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1850, after repeated British naval incursions into its territorial waters, the Brazilian parliament passed Lei 581 which abolished the Brazilian slave trade, the largest in the Atlantic world. This paper analyzes the court given jurisdiction to enforce the law, the Auditoria Geral da Marinha in Rio de Janeiro. This paper argues that the Auditoria raised the deterrent threat against slave-trading, helping to end the trade by 1856. However, the Auditoria also produced two unforeseen and far-reaching effects. First, it limited its recognition of African captives as legal persons, constraining their testimony and preventing it from highlighting the fact that merchants had illegally imported hundreds of thousands of enslaved captives between 1831 and 1850. Second, the Auditoria undermined abstract legal distinctions between the high seas, coastal waters, and coastal land, producing unforeseen tensions between state authorities and the slave owners whose vast coastal estates were subject to invasive investigations. The paper demonstrates the effect of the Auditoria on Brazilian law, sovereignty, and territory.