The adjudication of slave ship captures, coercive intervention, and value exchange in comparative Atlantic perspective, ca. 1839–1870

Richards, Jake Subryan ORCID: 0000-0001-8442-9864 (2020) The adjudication of slave ship captures, coercive intervention, and value exchange in comparative Atlantic perspective, ca. 1839–1870. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 62 (4). 836 - 867. ISSN 0010-4175

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Abstract

What were the consequences of creating jurisdictions against the transatlantic slave trade in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world? Answering this question requires a comparative focus on the courts of mixed commission that adjudicated naval captures of slave ships, located at Sierra Leone (the foremost site of British abolition) and Brazil (the primary mid-century target). Court jurisdiction conflicted with sovereign jurisdiction regarding the presence of recaptives (“liberated Africans”), the risk of re-enslavement, and unlawful naval captures. To rescue the re-enslaved and compensate the loss of property, regulating anti-slave-trade jurisdiction involved coercive strategies alternating with negotiated value exchanges. Abolition as a legal field emerged from interactions between liberated Africans, British diplomatic and naval agents, and local political elites in Brazil and on the Upper Guinea Coast.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/comparativ...
Additional Information:	© 2020 The Author
Divisions:	International History
Subjects:	J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration D History General and Old World > DT Africa
Date Deposited:	16 Oct 2020 11:51
Last Modified:	12 Dec 2024 02:21
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/107003

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