Well if you're from the United States, its because we have a tendency to focus on our history and how slavery and the Civil War that caused its demise are vitally important to the United States and its development. Since the beginning, slavery was an intensely controversial issue that spawned leaders such as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, organizations like the Underground Railroad and events like John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry and the Civil War. It led to the death of Lincoln, Jim Crow laws, the Civil Rights Act and the violence we are still coming to terms with today. Slavery is at the heart of American issues with race and class.

For Brazilians, the same issue applies but on a whole other spectrum, to study slavery, abolition, civil rights, class, race in Brazil its an entirely different ballpark, an entirely different sport and the same goes with any country that dealt with slavery. But to an American, how abolition in other countries carried out is entirely unimportant to us for a couple of different reasons.

• They don't speak English- The documents on Brazilian abolition aren't something most Americans can understand because most Americans don't know Portuguese.

• The Brazilian Abolition Movement lasted less time and took place after our own Civil War- The Brazilian Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1878 by Joaquim Nabuco and slavery was outlawed in 1888. The United States is still reeling from Reconstruction at this point and the Brazilian movement at its core only lasted a decade before having slavery abolished.

• Americans are on a different level on the world stage- From the 1890s on, the United States is a World Power establishing colonies and flexing its muscles worldwide. People learn US history, Soviet history, Chinese or British because they are, or were the top dogs on the global scale. Brazil was considered a backwater until the 1970s-1980s.

I hope this helped!

'Seeming' is entirely down to you and your perceptions of whatever you've been exposed to.