For centuries, servile labour exercised a determining influence on the political, economic and social life of the Russian Empire and Brazil both as a Portuguese colony and as the Empire of Brazil from 1822. Beginning as a system of coerced labour, it had metastasized into all parts of the body politic of both empires, leaving no area of life free from its taint. The institutions and values of the two empires were so thoroughly permeated by the existence of servile labour that its abolition appeared unthinkable, let alone practicable. Yet the pressure for abolition rose inexorably in the nineteenth century, making the inconceivable conceivable and the unachievable achievable.

The Russian and Brazilian empires were not immune to the demand for abolition that swept Europe and the Americas, but they were able to resist it until the second half of the nineteenth century. The institution of servile labour, central to all aspects of life in both empires, was fiercely defended by the master class, who resisted each and every attempt, however modest, to limit its power over serfs or slaves. The tenacious defence of slavery and serfdom by the serf and slave owners made abolition an existential matter for both empires, calling into question the constitutional, economic and social structures. If this was not enough, the abolition of serfdom and slavery marked only the start of a fundamental transformative process whose end could not be foreseen. What was to happen to the freed bondsman? How were they to be integrated into their respective societies? How was the relationship between the ruling class and the state to be reconstructed in the aftermath of such a traumatic breakdown? The answers to these questions tended to be stark and bleak: the destruction of the state, the collapse of the economy, the end of private property: in short, the ruin of civilization. Given such a vista, it is hardly surprising that in neither empire was there much enthusiasm for undertaking such a risky enterprise.

Nevertheless, decisive political action ended serfdom in 1861 in Russia and slavery in 1888 in Brazil, giving individual freedom to the serfs and slaves, overcoming the opposition of the master class and embracing all the consequent risks of emancipation.