The schooner Providência was captured by the Brazilian navy in 1839, by direct order of the President of the province of Pernambuco. The district attorney who prosecuted the slave dealers was Nabuco de Araújo, then a political dependent of the Cavalcanti brothers and the Regent Araújo Lima, also a Pernambucan. There were at least other 22 slave ships that visited Pernambuco in that same year. Only the Providência was captured. The case went to trial at the local justice, in Pernambuco, the judge was a former President of Paraíba, and later sent to the Mixed Commission in Rio de Janeiro, leading to an intense diplomatic debate between Brazil, Portugal and England. This case helps us to observe local and imperial politics regarding the slave trade, the networks of the Atlantic slave trade and also helps us to understand how the repression or connivance to the slave trade were linked to politics in different levels.
slave trade; the reaction of 1837; the 1831 anti slave trade law