iain miskimmin

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧 Britain sent warships into a friendly country's harbours. 🔥 And burned its ships at anchor. ⚓ That country was Brazil 🇧🇷 More enslaved Africans were taken to Brazil than to any other country on earth. ⛓️ Not America 🇺🇸 Brazil 🇧🇷 Nearly half of everyone shipped across the Atlantic went there. Ten times more than the United States. 🌍 In 1826 Britain made Brazil sign a treaty. The trade would end by 1830. 📜 Brazil signed. Then ignored it. They even had a phrase for laws like that: "para inglês ver". For the English to see. 👀 Tens of thousands of people kept arriving every year. 😔 So Britain changed the law. Brazilian slave ships could now be tried in British courts as pirates. ⚖️ In 1850 the Royal Navy sailed into Brazil's ports, under the guns of the forts. They cut out the slave ships and burned them. 🚢 Emperor Pedro II's government had a choice. War with Britain. Or end the trade. ⚔️ That September, Brazil banned it. Within two years the trade was dead. 🕊️ Yet today only one country is asked to feel ashamed. 🤔 The one that stopped it. 🇬🇧 Be part of us. 🇬🇧 Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

Slavery was normal everywhere. ⛓️ Pharaohs. Romans. Vikings. 👑 Then one country's people said no. 🇬🇧 No army. No vote. ✊ 300,000 stopped buying sugar. 🍬 Nearly a million signed. One in every seventeen people in Britain. ✍️ Then the Navy went to sea. ⚓ 1,600 slave ships taken. 150,000 people freed. 🕊️ It cost a century and a fortune. Barely taught at all. 📚 That's why we're here. 📖 Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧 Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧