The United States and Brazil share the distinction of being the last places in the Americas to emancipate slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and Fourteenth Amendment (1865) accomplished this in the U.S. and the Golden Law in Brazil did the same in 1888, although emancipation occurred gradually there over three decades. Roberto Saba calls the experience "the American Mirror" and argues that it can tell us a great deal about the hemisphere, the industrialization of American economies, and the growth of a new order.

Essential Reading:

Roberto Saba, American Mirror: The United States and Brazil in the Age of Emancipation (2021).

Recommended Reading:

Emilia Viotti da Costa, The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histories (2000).

Sven Beckert, The Empire of Cotton: A Global History (2015).

Matthew Karp, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy (2016).

Angela Alonso, The Last Abolition: The Brazilian Antislavery Movement, 1868-1888 (2021).

Greg Downs, The Second American Revolution: The Civil War-Era Struggle Over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic (2019).

Teresa Cribelli, Industrial Forests and Mechanical Marvels: Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (2016).

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