The Mixed Commissions for the Suppression of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century

Author:

Bethell Leslie

Abstract

As a contribution to the history of Britain's campaign for the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in the nineteenth century this article examines, first, the creation of various mixed commissions for the adjudication of vessels captured on suspicion of trading in slaves after the trade had been declared illegal; secondly, the composition of these mixed commissions and the way in which they functioned, with special reference to the several commissions sitting in Sierra Leone which for 25 years dealt with the majority of captured slave vessels; and thirdly, the reasons why after 1839, and especially after 1845, captured ships were increasingly taken before British vice-admiralty courts with the result that the mixed commissions were gradually allowed to run down, although most of them were not abolished until the Atlantic slave trade had been finally suppressed.

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (CUP)

Subject

History

Reference70 articles.

1. Memorandum on the Sierra Leone archives, October 1871, F.O. 84/1342.

2. Granville, Foreign Secretary, to Kennedy, Governor, no. 3, 6 April 1871, F.O. 84/1342).

3. The Anglo-Portuguese commissions at Luanda and the Cape were suspended from 30 June 1870 and finally abolished by Convention in 1872. In June 1870 Britain and the United States signed a Convention abolishing the Anglo-American Commissions at Freetown, the Cape and New York from 30 September 1870. The other remaining commissions also ceased to function, if they had not already done so, but were not formally dissolved until later in the century. The British government decided, for example, that it was still not expedient finally to abolish the Anglo-Spanish commissions since, unlike the United States and Portugal, Spain had not yet entirely abolished slavery (Viscount Enfield to Rances, Spanish minister in London, 26 April, 10 May 1871, B.F.S.P. LXII, 1033–4).

4. The last ship to come before the mixed court in Sierra Leone was the Spanish vessel America, condemned by the Anglo-Spanish commission in 1864 after the British arbitrator had been called upon to cast the deciding vote. The last ship to be taken before any mixed court was the Portuguese vessel Dahomey, captured in the mouth of the Congo by the British steamer Espoir in March 1866 and taken to the Anglo-Portuguese court in Luanda; it was acquitted in June after Portuguese arbitration.

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