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The Meiji period, also known as the Meiji era, is a Japanese era which extended from September 8, 1868 through July 30, 1912.<br/><br/> This period represents the first half of the Empire of Japan during which Japanese society moved from being an isolated feudal society to its modern form. Fundamental changes affected its social structure, internal politics, economy, military, and foreign relations.
The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade took place across the Atlantic Ocean from the 16th through to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of those enslaved that were transported to the New World, many on the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, were West Africans from the central and western parts of the continent sold by western Africans to western European slave traders, or by direct European capture to the Americas.<br/><br/> The numbers were so great that Africans who came by way of the slave trade became the most numerous Old World immigrants in both North and South America before the late 18th century. Far more slaves were taken to South America than to the north. The South Atlantic economic system centered on producing commodity crops, and making goods and clothing to sell in Europe, and increasing the numbers of African slaves brought to the New World.
Brazil was a colony of Portugal from the landing of Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500 until 1815, when it was elevated to the status of United Kingdom with Portugal and the Algarve. The colonial bond was in fact broken in 1808, when the capital of the Portuguese Kingdom was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, after Napoleon invaded Portugal. Independence from Portugal was achieved in 1822. Initially independent as the Empire of Brazil, the country has been a republic since 1889, although the bicameral legislature, now called Congress, dates back to 1824, when the first constitution was ratified.
John Gabriel Stedman (1744 – 7 March 1797) was a distinguished British–Dutch soldier and noted author. He was born in 1744 in Dendermonde, which then was in the Austrian Netherlands, to Robert Stedman, a Scot and an officer in the Dutch Republic's Scots Brigade, and his wife of presumed Dutch noble lineage, Antoinetta Christina van Ceulen.<br/><br/> He lived most of his childhood in 'the Dutch Republic with his parents but spent time with his uncle in Scotland. His years in Surinam, on the northern coast of South America, were characterized by encounters with African slaves and colonial planters, as well as the exotic local flora and fauna.<br/><br/> He recorded his experiences in <i>The Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam</i> (1796) which, with its firsthand depictions of slavery and other aspects of colonization, became an important tool in the early abolitionist cause.