The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law

by Jenny S. Martinez

There is a broad consensus among scholars that the idea of human rights was a product of the Enlightenment but that a self-conscious and broad-based human rights movement focused on international law only began after World War II. In this narrative, the nineteenth century's absence is conspicuous--few have considered that era seriously, much less written books on it. But as Jenny Martinez shows in this novel interpretation of the roots of human rights law, the foundation of the movement that we know today was a product of one of the nineteenth century's central moral the movement to ban the international slave trade. Originating in England in the late eighteenth century, abolitionism achieved remarkable success over the course of the nineteenth century. Martinez focuses in particular on the international admiralty courts, which tried the crews of captured slave ships. The courts, which were based in the Caribbean, West Africa, Cape Town, and Brazil, helped free at least 80,000 Africans from captured slavers between 1807 and 1871. Here then, buried in the dusty archives of admiralty courts, ships' logs, and the British foreign office, are the foundations of contemporary human rights international courts targeting states and non-state transnational actors while working on behalf the world's most persecuted peoples--captured West Africans bound for the slave plantations of the Americas. Fueled by a powerful thesis and novel evidence, Martinez's work will reshape the fields of human rights history and international human rights law.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

263 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 2011

Reviews

[Teri · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very thorough, yet concise presentation of international law in regards to human rights and the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. Martinez details the major nation-state players in the transatlantic slave trade and the treaties and multi-national court systems to abolish the trade, as well as the laws that governed these systems. Martinez puts the abolition and laws governing the transatlantic slave trade in context with international human rights laws through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is a well-researched topic that is often not considered outside of academia.

[Noah Lederman Greis · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

On account of my fully insane schedule this fall I had to plow this thing in less than two days, which means my hold on the details will probably be foggy at best in like a week. But!

Absolutely brilliant stuff. The very baseline of this book, that you can trace international law and international courts to the abolition of the slave trade, is something I did not know and had honestly never even considered. Martinez places it perfectly in its historical context but also makes illuminating comparison after illuminating comparison with the present day. The final chapter is a dazzling finisher, succinctly formulating and contextualizing the fundamental issues with contemporary international law — issues that have only become more apparent since this book was written in 2012, as we've all watched the ICC being proven powerless in the face of genocide once again. The last note, however, is a hopeful one. Not in some vague, liberal-centrist sense, but in an educated, historicized and genuinely profound way.