As any Portuguese person have heard since primary school, Portugal became the first country to abolish slavery #OTD in 1761 thanks to the Marquis of Pombal (this guy).

Except it didn’t.

There was in fact a royal decree related to slavery in 1761 (in September). It stated that enslaved Africans would become free upon entry into metropolitan Portugal, but it didn’t alter the legal condition of the enslaved people already in Portugal nor born there after that date.

The aim was to divert the enslaved workforce to the ‘overseas domains’, where they were ‘greatly needed for the culture of the Lands and the Mines,’ and limit the number of Africans in Portugal, where they competed with poor whites for the same job.

All this, as well as what would be done to avoid that the new law was used as a pretext to come and seek freedom in Portugal, can be read in the decree (in Portuguese): https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/viewer?id=4662332

No palaeographic skills? No problem!
Read it here instead: http://www.governodosoutros.ics.ul.pt/index.php?menu=consulta&id_partes=105&id_normas=30898&accao=ver

But that didn’t stop the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, to claim – while in an official visit to the memorial to the Atlantic slave trade in Gorée Island in 2017 – that Portugal recognised the injustice of slavery in 1761, becoming a human rights pioneer.

On the topic, it’s worth reading Cristina Nogueira Da Silva & Keila Grinberg’s 2011 article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0144039X.2011.588480