# Brazil and the Spanish West Indies  
The end of the slave trade and the gradual abolition of slavery occurred later in Brazil (Alonso, 2015, p. 109). Since 1808, when the Portuguese royal family moved to Rio de Janeiro to escape Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion and opened the Brazilian market to the importation of British manufactured goods, Britain had increasingly pressured Portugal to end the slave trade to Brazil.  
British pressure continued after Brazilian independence in 1822. Eventually, on 7 November 1831, the Brazilian Congress passed the Feijó Law prohibiting imports of enslaved Africans to Brazil. The Law of 1831 created a new category of "liberated Africans". Once their status was confirmed, these Africans were employed by the Brazilian State to perform public works, or by private individuals for whom they were to work as servants or free workers for a period of 14 years (Mamigonian, 2017). But despite this legislation, the illegal slave trade to Brazil continued until 1850, when the Eusébio de Queirós Law (Law No. 581) outlawed slave imports to Brazil for a second time.  
Despite legal prohibitions, the slave trade from Africa to Cuba continued. Whereas in Spain the debates about gradual emancipation intensified after the deposition of Queen Isabella II in 1868, in Cuba the colonists from the eastern part of the island embraced the idea of independence in an uprising that gave origin to the Ten Years' War (1868-1878) (Cowling, 2013, p. 39). Slave rebels and free coloureds, who were also the subject of discrimination under colonial policies, joined forces with the elite groups to fight for the abolition of slavery and for independence from Spain (Ferrer, 1999, p. 27). Spanish elites feared the movements for independence, and on 4 July 1870, the Spanish Parliament passed the Moret Law. Similar to free womb legislation in other regions of Latin America, the Law also included numerous restrictions (Araújo, 2017, pp. 72-73).