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

Richards, Jake Subryan (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:	27 Mar 2024 21:30
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/107003

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