ANGLO-PORTUGUESE TREATY Treaty of Friendship and Alliance between His Britannic Majesty and His Royal Highness the Prince Regent of Portugal.

[ANGLO-PORTUGUESE TREATY] Treaty of Friendship and Alliance between His Britannic Majesty and His Royal Highness the Prince Regent of Portugal. Signed at Rio de Janeiro, the 19th of February 1810. Published by authority. Signed: Strangford [and] Conde de Linhares. 128 London: Printed by A. Strahan, Printers-Street, Gough Square 1810. pp. 13, [1]. Parallel English and Portuguese text on facing pages. Original blue stitched wrappers. In very good condition. 285 L1BC 1D "The Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of February 1810 was an agreement signed by British and Portuguese representatives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. At the time Brazil was still under Portuguese colonial rule. In fact, the Portuguese royal court had been moved to Brazil in 1807 when Portugal itself had been threatened by Napoleonic armies. As a result, Rio de Janeiro replaced Lisbon as the capital of the Portuguese Empire. During this period of time Portugal was closely allied with Great Britain, which was also opposed to Napoleonic France and its allies. Portugal was a part of the British-led alliance fighting against the Napoleon during the Napoleonic wars of the early 1800s.

The treaty affirms the “perpetual, firm, and unalterable friendship” and military alliance between the United Kingdom and the Portuguese Empire. The most interesting clause of the treaty, however, may be clause 10, which sought to restrict Portuguese participation in the transatlantic slave trade.

Great Britain outlawed its own transatlantic slave trade from 1807 to 1808, after decades of abolitionist pressure. After that Britain began to pressure other European powers to abolish the slave trade as well. Weaker nations, such as Portugal, were most susceptible to British pressure.

The 1810 Treaty, however, does not outlaw the Portuguese slave trade. Instead, it only seeks to restrict and limit it. Clause 10 of this treaty states that Portugal will no longer engage in slave trading in the parts of Africa that it does not control. The treaty explicitly states that Portugal can still trade slaves in the parts of Africa under its control or influence, namely the Angola-Congo region and in the parts of West Africa where Portugal had customarily traded.

The anti-slave trade clauses in the 1810 Treaty, then, were very limited and ineffective. But they did mark the beginning of a general trend towards increasing British pressure on foreign nations to end maritime human trafficking." ANGLOPORTUGUESE TREATY.