Slave Trade, Abolition and the Long History of International Criminal Law

Name: Slave Trade, Abolition and the Long History of International Criminal Law
Brand: Taylor & Francis

Taylor & Francis

Modern international criminal law typically traces its origins to the twentieth-century Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, excluding the slave trade and abolition. Yet, as this book shows, the slave trade and abolition resound in international criminal law in multiple ways. Its central focus lies in a close examination of the often-controversial litigation, in the first part of the nineteenth century, arising from British efforts to capture slave ships, much of it before Mixed Commissions. With archival-based research into this litigation, it explores the legal construction of so-called \u2018recaptives\u2019 (slaves found on board captured slave ships). The book argues that, notwithstanding its promise of freedom, the law actually constructed recaptives restrictively. In particular, it focused on questions of intervention rather than recaptives\u2019 rights. At the same time it shows how a critical reading of the archive reveals that recaptives contributed to litigation in important, but h.