Seeking Capture, Resisting Seizure

Front matter

ADRIANE SANCTIS DE BRITO

Seeking Capture,

Resisting Seizure

Chapter 1 Weaponising Treaties: The British Fight Against the Slave Trade

A. ‘Setting the navy free to do its work’ in war and in peace Change in case law... ee eee Time for treaties... 0... ee ec ce eee The piracy alternative... 2... 0. eee ee eee

Chapter 2 The Triple Formula’s Teeth: The Power to Visit, Capture and Adjudicate Ships... 6... eee eee cee eee

‘Decoupled’ visitation... 2.2.0.0... 0. ee eee eee In the absence of a treaty... 6... eee eee eee The captor’s position... 6.2... . eee eee eee eee Forms and directives... 0.0... 0... eee eee Forms and practice... 2... ee eee

Contents

Times of transition... 2.2... ee eee ee eee eee 78 B; A new treaty tegime: diria onneni ee ee 79 Starting; POU ees saio Boas ge aks ge en eens: Saeed = 84

Chapter 4 A. Search in visitation... . 1... n eee ee ee eee 93 Inspection of papeis servere isra dak pi eee eee 93 Sealed papers isee ree tura BOSE SE TE EELS OSS 94 Equipment clause... 2.2... 0... eee eee eee eee 96 Form of the process ... 0... 0... eee eee eee 112

Chapter 5 Bi (Piracy revisited se O Fee weenie Rie Da aaa Oe 163

VI Contents

Contents

VII

Acknowledgements

This is a revised version of the results of my doctoral research’ benefitting from further reflexion and more recently published studies. Each page in this book was only made possible with the collective support and encouragement of generous people and institutions, to whom I would like to express my sincere gratitude.

For the opportunity to improve and publish this work, I am grateful to the editorial team at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory. To Thomas Duve for carefully considering this submission, and to Otto Danwerth for the patient support during the editing process, thank you. I am deeply thankful to my doctoral supervisor, Samuel Barbosa, for all the wise advice he gave me throughout the years and for his endorsement for this publication. I am also indebted to Milo’ Vec for the rigorous and constructive assessment that guided significant changes to this work. For the editing of an earlier version, I thank Jim Tierney of Yale University. For the final detailed copyediting that considerably improved this book, my thanks to James Thompson.

In Brazil and elsewhere, I was unbelievably lucky to receive invaluable mentoring and feedback during my doctoral studies and after the thesis defence at the University of São Paulo. I thank the team of researchers and staff at the Max Planck Institute in Frankfurt for offering me intensive training in legal history and outstanding discussions at the very beginning of this research. There, and in conferences promoted by King’s College London and the Harvard Institute for Global Law and Policy, I met researchers willing to engage with still rough ideas and who offered immensely helpful suggestions. For the constant open dialogue and treasured insight, starting when I was her tutee and blooming into a close friendship, I thank Fabia Carvalho. For early direction on this research, important exchanges and

The doctoral dissertation was archived with the University of São Paulo in November 2018 and is available at https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/2/2139/tde-30102020- 143337/en.php.

Acknowledgements

X encouragement, I am grateful to Beatriz Mamigonian, George Galindo, João Henrique Roriz, Daniel Carvalho and Rafael Mafei. For the constant inspiration that I found in his writing, refreshing conversations over coffee and cheerful guidance, I am profoundly grateful to Martti Koskenniemi. My time among the researchers of the Erik Castrén Institute at the University of Helsinki taught me more than I could then understand. I am also deeply thankful to Anne Orford and the Laureate Program researchers at Melbourne University for paradigm-shifting comments which shed a whole new light on this study. To Hilary Charleswoth for an outstanding conversation that changed my perspective on this research and academia in general. To Ville Kari, my thanks for his invaluable expert advice on prize law. For the warm welcome and debates, I thank the researchers of the Max Planck Institute in Luxembourg, especially Michel Erpelding, and brilliant librarians, in particular Allan Mulondo. My thanks to Fabian Klose, Johannes Paulmann and all the generous researchers from the Global Humanitarian Research Academy for the interdisciplinary and fruitful dialogue at the ICRC and at the Leibniz Institute for European History. This work was also made possible at different stages by CAPES? and the Tokyo Foundation’s Research Abroad Program. I am deeply indebted to all these institutions for offering me access to the conditions and tools for this research, from access to basic infrastructure to distant archives, and to the dedicated professionals who warmly welcomed me as a newcomer and those who work to preserve academic knowledge and historical documentation in the most varied conditions.

My personal journey began much earlier as an undergraduate law student, when I met other students who opened up my perspective on human rights and international law at NEI/ USP. My special thanks to Raquel da Cruz Lima, Jefferson Nascimento and César Yip. Over the years, researchers and professors at the University of Sao Paulo and Getúlio Vargas Foundation offered me essential guidance and opportunities to find a career in research. Thanks to them, I was able persist on this path. My gratitude to Alberto do Amaral Jr, Arthur Capella, José Garcez Ghirardi, Luciana Ramos, Marina Feferbaum, Michelle Ratton, Renata Nagamine, Rubens Glezer, Salem Nasser and many others.

This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior — Brasil (CAPES) — Finance Code 001.

Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to my colleagues and my amazing students at the International Relations Institute (USP) for the warm welcome, a refreshing and productive period of teaching and an open space for academic exchange. I am also grateful to Ana Silva Rosa, Andressa Maciel, Anna Venturini, Bruna Angotti, Carolina Cooper, Clarissa Gross, Conrado Hiibner Mendes, Danyelle Carvalho, Felipe de Paula, Fernando Sales, Iara Crepaldi, Luciana Reis, Luisa Plastino, Luiz Guilherme Paiva, Marcelo Oliveira, Mariana Amaral, Marina Barreto, Natália Neris, Natalia Pires, Pedro Ansel, Rafael Mafei and the other brilliant researchers at the Center for the Analysis of Liberty and Authoritarianism (LAUT), a clear evidence of the power of collective research and as a strong source of hope amid the times we are living.

Far from home, I met wonderful people who brightened my journey during my graduate studies and will always have my gratitude. For our talks about academic life, laughs, wine and walks, I thank especially Hiva Khedri, Viktorija Jakjimovska, Maria Varaki and Luis Bogliolo.

For their warm friendship over the course of this research, my sincere thanks also go to Adriana Neto, Alberto Barbosa Jr, Fabiana Pinho, Fernando Sierra, Guilherme Klafke, Leonardo Rosa, Marcos de Sá, Mauricio Chavenco, Paulo Saffioti, Pedro de Paula, Luciana Reis, Renata Madeo and Yuri Luz.

With much appreciation, I thank Artur Pericles for the true partnership of sharing everyday academic life with me and for being the most enthusiastic reader and editor of this work. For passing on his never-ending excitement with the unknown, I am truly grateful to my father, Marcos Brito. To my mother, Beatriz Sanctis, and grandmother Maria Sanctis, I offer my deepest gratitude for the inspirational examples of powerful women they are, each in their own way.

Acknowledgements

XI

‘Suppression was a gigantic combined operation. Foreign Secretaries who negotiated the treaties, and the ambassadors and consuls who carried out the ceaseless battle against diplomatic evasiveness, spent a great part of their time in striving to set the Navy free to do its work.’

When the Act for the Abolition of Slave Trade of 1807 passed in the British Parliament,” Britain was not the only state to abolish the previously widely accepted traffic. Denmark had abolished the slave trade in 1803, the Haitian Revolution had culminated in the declaration of slavery abolition in 1804 and the United States would enact a prohibition in 1808. Yet it was Britain that came to be known as the bastion of international slave trade suppression in numerous celebratory historical accounts. How was Great Britain any different?

Britain expanded its domestic abolition into an international policy? enforced through legal imperialism.* Ward’s account, quoted above, is just one revealing example of the many exalted readings depicting the British quest. He portrays a complex operation involving diplomatic representatives working hard behind the scenes to design and enforce treaties, all directed at ‘freeing up’ the navy to do its ‘work’. British seamen would be responsible for the main act, that is, spotting, stopping, capturing and bringing to adjudication vessels suspected of being engaged in the slave trade. After all, that was the way Britain went about fighting and winning battles: over the seas, using its incomparable navy.

2 The Abolition Act of 1807 was the first to prohibit slave trade for British subjects. This prohibition was later expanded in subsequent legislation. See Hastam (2019) 37-38.

N

There is no shortage of studies on the motivation behind Britain’s undertaking of the international effort to abolish the slave trade. Over the years, many have tried to explain abolition by aggregating elements of moral, religious and economic grounds.* It is of course likely, and these accounts are evidence of it, that all these factors played a role, and that each may have begun to vary throughout the years. Identifying the central reasons behind the British quest is not the aim of this study; nor is delving into the vast literature on the history of the slave trade and its abolition. Instead, this book hopes to contribute to the discussion about the means used in the project of slave trade suppression, specifically the legal means.

Ward’s account quoted leaves a central factor unnoticed. The ‘freedom’ enjoyed by the British navy to battle against the slave trade was created and maintained by diplomats who were busy translating its ‘work’ — in effect an expression of the British fleet’s force and might — into rights held by Great Britain against other states (or, by extension, foreign citizens and their property). While a powerful tool in that context, international law remains overshadowed by narratives recounting how ‘t]he Slave Trade was [...] suppressed by the twin weapon of diplomatic pressure and exercise of naval power é

This book is conceived as a modest contribution to a broader understanding of the constitutive relationship of international law and power in the field examining the history of slave trade abolition. Here, I understand international law in a broad sense as [a law] with the capacity to regulate relations between states as well as between states, peoples, and other international actors, but [...] also recognized as a language of government in certain contexts, as a bundle of techniques.”

In recent years, the abolition of the slave trade has been gaining more attention in historical accounts of international law.” Additionally, some of the work on the global history of the slave trade or slavery has paid specific

Among the most cited contributions to this debate are e.g. Du Bors (1904); COUPLAND (1933); WiLLIAMS (1944); TEMPERLEY (1972); Exris (1987); DRESCHER (1987, 2010); BLACKBURN (1988); Davis (2006). For an account of different ‘stages’ of the literature on abolitionism, see STAUFFER (2012).

CRAWFORD/ KOSKENNIEMI (2012) 2, emphasis added.

Especially after the so-called ‘turn to history’: GaLINDO (2005).

attention to legal structures and has brought important contributions to the international legal history of slavery.” More recently, however, works centred on the role of international law in the process of slave trade suppression have begun to reveal new perspectives on that part of history.

Holger Lutz Kern, for example, has published a brief account of Britain’s strategic use of international law, among other available means, to implement the project of slave trade abolition. He highlights the transformation of the main legal foundations of the British policy from the unilateral extension of belligerent rights to the efforts of British representatives to urge other states to consent to a new set of peacetime rights. !º Using a similar approach, Janine Voigt reconstructs the development in multilateral conferences among European countries towards slave trade abolition in international law." In tackling slave trade suppression as a chapter of the anti-slavery legal history, Jean Allain has also contributed to the history of the conferences, focusing on the European and US interpretations of the law against the slave trade in the 19th century.”

Other publications continue the line of research inaugurated by Leslie Bethell’s seminal work on mixed commissions — special tribunals created to adjudicate on ships captured for being suspected of engaging in the slave trade. Among them, Jenny Martinez’ much-debated book looks to slave trade suppression in search of ‘missing pieces’ in the history of human rights, arguing that mixed commissions can be considered the first international human rights courts.‘* Using a different approach, Emily Haslam finds important lessons in mixed commissions’ practices for inscribing the slave trade in the history of international criminal law and alternative thinking about its victims.’

In addition to international human rights and criminal law, other authors have begun to consider slave trade suppression in the context of humanitarian interventions. Maeve Ryan looks to the 19th-century efforts

See especially Du Bors (1904); BLackBuRN (2011).

Kern (2004).

against the slave trade as a historical example of the burdens of carrying out a humanitarian action.!é Fabian Klose proposes a new understanding of the genealogy of humanitarian intervention (as a political science concept) by placing its origin in the 19th century, when the slave trade abolition and other interdependent imperial efforts generated the idea of military protection of humanitarian norms. ‘7

Incorporating key moments of the history of slave trade abolition, Lauren Benton and Lisa Ford’s depiction of the British ‘rage for order’ places law in the spotlight of the 19th-century imperialism.'* Their book make sense of a set of initiatives by which Britain dictated the terms of various kinds of relations well beyond the formal boundaries of its dominions.” In that governance arrangement, both diplomatic pressure and naval power relied on international law to help advance their goals of imperial control.”°

Michel Erpelding’s analysis of the history of anti-slavery international law comprises the period from the first decades of the 19th century up to the mid- 20th-century creation of the United Nations. In his account, the campaign for the abolition of the slave trade led to the first of many changes formalised in international law under the liberal goal of ending slavery, conceived as a necessary step towards ‘civilization’. Erpelding points out how, paradoxically, legal mechanisms for the suppression of slavery legitimised the conservation of exploitative relations among states and practices such as forced labour."

Despite differences in their objectives, these studies share a common element: their narratives mention treaties and broad legal policies, which provide us with vivid pictures of international law in this period of history. When observing general changes in the policies against the slave trade, however, many of these studies either assume the British position or focus heavily on British efforts. This methodological choice results in stories that portray (in varying degrees) foreign parties to the British either as recalcitrant to the humanitarian British efforts or resistant to abuses of British actions legitimised by those goals. Consulting those works, the reader is left mes-

See BENTON/Forp (2016).

BentON/FoRD (2016), ch. 1.

Ibid.

ERPELDING (2017); Brito (2019).

22 23 24 25 26 merised by the contrasting visions of the British undertaking, as either a flagbearer or an empire augmenting its dominions. She is also left in doubt as to how the other parties could have reacted to those plans the authors describe. Yet every history of human accomplishments, including empires, is jointly constructed: ‘The external world is no passive receptacle of imperial influences but plays the centre’s factions against each other using imperial favour or opposition to advance its agendas.’

This book takes another direction. Changing the scale, I argue, allows for the observation of the exchanges, tensions and interpretations emerging from the common ground of law. Zooming in on those colourful images and looking at the grey areas in-between the pixels enables us to gain a deeper understanding of how international law worked to regulate relations, either as a language or a bundle of techniques.”

This study will seek to offer an understanding of the dynamics of international law in the slave trade suppression, deliberately avoiding stories of heroes and villains among states, instead focusing on the employment of international law in view of each party’s immediate projects. Through their battles of legal interpretation, we may start to make sense of the role of the legal technique as a power mobiliser.” The approach will turn to revealing concepts and legal fictions as ‘highly condensed forms of rhetorical material that allow often highly controversial political and philosophical propositions to be passed on as part of legal routine’.”°

This approach is particularly valuable for creating counter-narratives to the usual perspective through which international law is conceived and its history is told. It is not a matter of ‘adding more and more histories’ to international law in order to make it ‘truly comprehensive’.”° Instead, by considering the dynamics of the ‘constant work of imagining and reimagining’, that is, the work of legal interpretation, it reveals how these interpreters ‘used power through the various mechanisms they have’.?” This helps bring

CRAWFORD/ KOSKENNIEMI (2012) 2.

OrroRD (2016). See also ORFORD (2012).

The point against portraying the legal history of peripheries as ‘missing pieces’ in a wider narrative is advanced by Veçoso (2018) 128.

28 29 to the surface the differences conserved in legal structures and concepts,” and also highlights the capacity of change and empowerment through law.”

Global accounts of slave trade abolition that centre on international law usually contain two subplots within their larger narratives. The first begins with the British quest to establish treaties with other powers: France and the United States mainly oppose British attempts to secure consent for rights of visit and capture; Spain and Portugal resist at first but later acquiesce to giving maritime police power to Britain in exchange of financial gain; among the 19th-century European conferences, other states, one by one, are convinced by Britain to cooperate with slave trade abolition. A second version recounts how Britain applied last-resort measures against the states refusing to implement treaties; that the Palmerston Act gave Britain the power to act against Portuguese slave traders beyond treaty limitations; the Aberdeen Act does the same, but this time against Brazilian slave traders.

Anglo-Brazilian relations do indeed play a central role in the overall history of slave trade suppression of the 19th century, as the second subplot hints. Brazil was the main destination of captured Africans in the Americas and one of the last to effectively abolish the transatlantic slave trade. However, there is more to explore in the Anglo-Brazilian relations beyond the Aberdeen Act (1845): the Brazilian position as a recalcitrant state to the British moral efforts towards slave trade suppression, or as a state that put up a futile resistance to the imperial power of Britain to dictate the new rules. For this reason, the Anglo-Brazilian case will be the focus of this book.

I will consider the Anglo-Brazilian legal battles as a discrete contribution to a better understanding of how British and Brazilians employed international law in the matter of slave trade abolition. The events related to the 1845 (Aberdeen Act) — most often mentioned in other historical accounts — will not be the focus. This study will instead adopt the timeframe from 1826 to 1845, which covers the period from the signature of the Anglo-Brazilian treaty for the suppression of the slave trade to the expiration of most of its clauses in 1845.

During the period from 1826 to 1845, at least two sets of ‘battles’ occurred between the parties of that treaty over its provisions. One dealt with the implementation of the clause proscribing the slave trade regarding its impact on the treatment of Africans liberated through the treaty’s

32 33 enforcement system against the slave trade. While this is an undeniably relevant set of disputes considering the main point of slave trade abolition, that will not be the focal point of this work,?º but rather the second set of battles that occurred under the treaty.” These consisted of a series of disputes around the mechanisms provided by the treaty to enforce the (partial or total, at different points in time) proscription of the slave trade. Combined, they constituted a set of rights in a triple formula for regulating visitation, capture and adjudication of vessels suspected of engaging in the slave trade. By considering the events from 1826 to 1845, I will examine the life of the triple formula of the Brazilian treaty, from its conception to its abandonment.

I aim to employ historical descriptions of these legal interpretative battles to highlight the political importance (for human exploitation, violence, and inequality) of what might at first glance be perceived as little more than rules governing the execution of proceedings.*” To that end, I start from the results of broader historical studies to reconstruct the concepts and directions that marked the Anglo-Brazilian treaty among the British quest of treaty-making. I also explore primary sources to supplement that information and to allow a reconstruction of the interpretative exchanges that constituted each of the battles.

The primary sources I rely on include the diplomatic correspondence between British and Portuguese foreign secretaries and their chargés d’affaires; correspondence between Brazilian and British foreign secretaries and their chargés d’affaires; reports of the cases and proceedings before Anglo-Brazilian mixed commissions; reports of the British Law Officers, of the Brazilian Foreign Office and of the Brazilian Council of State.”

The timeframe of that particular set of battles extends beyond 1845. A substantial study of them can be found in MAMIGONIAN (2017).

Both sets of battles are intimately intertwined in a key point I will analyse in Chapter 5, ‘Liberation and deviation’.

In quoting primary sources, I have retained their original spelling and punctuation. Whenever a document was already presented in both Portuguese and English official translations, the English version was chosen to be quoted or to be informed as source. Whenever the official documents were only available in Portuguese, I have translated them into English myself (i.e. cases involving Brazilian domestic legislation and the Brazilian Foreign Office reports). When dealing with mixed commissions, I have adopted the terms most frequently used in primary sources. For this reason, the Anglo-Brazilian com-

The choice of sources to be consulted was informed by an examination of the literature on Anglo-Brazilian relations of the period combined with a first look into the diplomatic correspondence and the British Law Officers’ reports. From those starting points, I followed the trail of each set of battles into the other sources, whenever the other actor’s manifestations seemed relevant for the contingencies. Sometimes battles occurred through correspondence between the Foreign Offices or diplomatic representatives, other times in mixed commissions, and others still involved many exchanges between different loci of interpretation through years of resignification.

This book by no means exhausts the legal disputes under the Anglo- Brazilian treaty of 1826, and my intention is certainly not to map all discussions involving the treaty. Instead, I want show both the sheer breadth and diversity of the respective Brazilian and British appropriations. The chapters of this book are organised around the Anglo-Brazilian treaty regime, which serves as a focal point that reveals multiple histories of international law and power through the series of interpretations and reinterpretations.

Chapter 1 explores the first steps of the British mobilisation of international law towards slave trade suppression. In doing so, it shows the point of choosing treaties to formalise abolition and mechanisms for its enforcement. Lastly, the Anglo-Brazilian treaty will be situated within the context of other treatises drafted by the British.

Chapter 2 addresses the functions and meanings of each of the elements of the triple formula (visitation, capture and adjudication). It begins with the interpretative disputes on the limits of the right of visit and search which reveals the stakes involved in the visitation of ships suspected of slave trading. Next, I present a complex set of regulations involved in the implementation of the visitation and capture of ships: What did the seamen of the 19th century have to take into account when executing the first two steps of the triple formula? I then focus on the third step of the triple formula and the regulations for the mixed commissions: How were they composed? How were they supposed to work? Finally, what was the point of mixed commissions in the triple formula treaty regimes?

missions will be referred to as the Rio mixed commission and the Sierra Leone mixed commission (instead of ‘Freetown mixed commission’ or other variations).

Chapter 3 deals with the Brazilian perspective of entering the network of British treaties against the slave trade. How did Brazilian independence first impact the international regulation against the slave trade? What did the transition from the Anglo-Portuguese treaty regime to the Anglo-Brazilian one look like? Lastly, in general, what did that triple formula imply for the Anglo-Brazilian relations?

Chapter 4 delves into the practices of treaty implementation with a focus on the internal mechanisms of the triple formula once it was in motion: What made a capture legal, what constituted the liability to pay indemnities, which positive steps were taken in the mixed commissions proceedings. In-between the blurry lines of war and peace, the nature of the regime was continually reassessed to make sense of its rules and conditions of procedure.

Chapter 5 presents the Anglo-Brazilian battles that dismantled the triple formula. British and Brazilian representatives engaged in disputes avoiding mixed commissions jurisdiction, questioning the legal system’s effectivity and ultimately reading their way out of the treaty. This set of battles reveals the process of reimagining the role and purpose of what remained from the system without the triple formula.

Chapter 1 Weaponising Treaties: The British Fight Against the Slave Trade

“To be cognizant of the Treaties entered into between Great Britain and other States, is to be apprized of all that have been concluded upon this subject; to know their contents is to be acquainted with the international history of the abolition of the Slave Trade. *

In his 1854 textbook, Robert Phillimore — one of the most prominent British international lawyers — proudly proclaimed that to know British treaties was to know the history of international law and abolition.” Anyone acquainted with the history of slave trade suppression would be sceptical about the centrality of these treaties, and of their practical benefits, given that Britain already had its powerful navy to do the job. On the other hand, a lawyer — and regardless of what one usually thinks about gunboat diplomacy — would probably be curious about the engineering of those treaties and the legal policy behind them. If legal tools were needed for the policy of slave trade suppression, why choose treaties? What were the treaties aiming at? What rights and obligations did they provide? How were the clauses intended to meet their goals?

These are the first questions to be addressed in this study. To understand these treaties as a legal technique, we will begin the search for answers in the complex legal context of the British international policy of slave trade suppression. We will begin by looking at the ways international law was mobilised by Britain to employ its battle-hardened navy to this new kind of fight that was about to begin after the Napoleonic Wars ended. We will see that, at first, the navy relied on the well-established legal grounds of warfare. Peacetime pushed the boundaries of legality in that practice, and a race to

1 PHiLLIMORE (1854) 251. 2 Ibid.

o create new foundations in international law started. The treaty-making through multilateral conferences designed to establish multilateral agreements would not succeed for decades. Instead, Britain found a way through bilateral treaties to maintain its position of dominance over the seas as a maritime police force against the slave trade. Next, we will explore the conventions that emerged from the British international quest of treaty-making through first incursions on their materials and general design.

A. ‘Setting the navy free to do its work’ in war and in peace

Prize law, neutrality and the flags

After its domestic turn against the slave trade in 1807,2 Britain would also initiate an international policy of suppressing the traffic. In these efforts, Britain profited from its wartime prerogatives established during the last few years of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815). Under the laws of war, British ships could not only board the vessels of foreign enemies but also inspect those of neutral states.* The right of visit was then well established among the belligerent rights of war. It enabled a party in a conflict to inspect a ship’s papers and cargo in order to determine its status according to its nationality — that is, whether it was neutral or inimical to the inspector — and whether the vessel was engaged in any breach of law.”

Neutrals — those states not engaged in the war — would breach the laws of neutrality if they were transporting contraband (‘certain goods which are destined to one of the conflict parties and which are susceptible to belligerent use’).° Beyond general practice, the grounds on which items could be legally seized were usually found in treaties and unilateral proclamations.” When such a breach was established, the ship could be detained and brought before prize courts to be declared a good prize of war.”

After the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1807), other British domestic legislation followed to expand its provisions. See Hastam (2019) 37-38.

SCHALLER (2015).

Both the words ‘prize’ in English and ‘prise’ in French derive from the Latin verb prehendere, which means ‘to seize’.? Being declared a good prize meant a capture (of a ship or its goods) was performed legally, in accordance with the body of law which balanced the interests of neutrals — preserving commerce through the freedom of navigation — and belligerents — to capture enemy ships or contraband.