Mixed Commission Court

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A Mixed Commission Court was a joint court set up by the British government with Dutch, Spanish or Portuguese representation following treaties agreed in 1817 and 1818. By 1820 there were six such courts. [1] This occurred during a period often referred to as Pax Britannica, a period of British hegemony following the defeat of the Napoleonic Empire.The different courts condemned more than 600 ships and they released almost 80.000 slaves. [2] The establishment of the Caribbean courts meant a new stage in the fight against slavery, a stage configurated through bilateral agreements, which provided legal security and involved at least in intention the slave powers. Besides, the location of the courts and the fate of the emancipated were very influenced by the actions against the slave trade emanating from the Vice admiralty Courts, their predecessors. [3]

Contents

Courts

Anglo-Portuguese Courts

During the Congress of Vienna on 21 January 1815 the British agreed to pay the Portuguese Prince Regent £300,000 in reparations for Portuguese ships seized by the British "cruizers" prior to 1 June 1814, on the basis that they were engaged in the slave trade. [7] : 73  The next day they entered into a further treaty which prohibited Portuguese ships from engaging in the slave trade along the coast of Africa north of the equator. [7] : 77 This was tied to a loan of £600,000 and the treaty was to be ratified within five months. [7] : 79  Over two years later on 28 July 1817 an Additional Convention was added which included the first provision for Mixed Commissions formed of an equal number of individuals of the two nations. One was to be located in a British possession and the other in a Portuguese possession, with one on the coast of Africa, and the other on the coast of Brazil. [7] : 89  A further Mixed Commission was also set up on a similar basis in London. While the treaty allowed Portuguese slave traders to continue their business south of the equator, the trade was forbidden to the north. The £300,000 mentioned in 1815 had not been paid, but the British agreed to pay it in two instalments of £150,000, as well as 5% interest since the earlier convention in January 1815. Full documentation of the treaty was to be available in English and Portuguese on all British ships. Further regulations governing the Mixed Commissions:

Anglo-Dutch Courts

These were established by the Anglo-Dutch Slave Trade Treaty of 1818. The Mixed Commission Court in Freetown sentenced in total 22 Dutch vessels during its existence between 1819 and 1862. [8] The Mixed Commission Court in Paramaribo sentenced only one vessel during its existence between 1819 and 1845, namely, the Nueve of Snauw in 1823. [9] [8]

Anglo Spanish Courts

These courts were stablished by the Anglo-Spanith treaty of 1817 in Sierra Leone and in La Habana. The Sierra Leone Court was the most important and in the case of the Spanish vessels, it sentenced from its start in 1819 to 1845, 251 vessels that carried out more than 25.000 slaves. [10] The Havana Court sentenced between 1824 to 1841 an amount of 10.391 slaves. [11] Many of these slaves were abused after their emancipation. [12]

References

  1. ↑ Adderley, Rosanne Marion (2006). "New negroes from Africa": slave trade abolition and free African settlement in the nineteenth-century Caribbean. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN   978-0-253-21827-8.
  2. ↑ Bethel, Leslie (1966). "The Mixed Commissions for the Suppressions of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century". Journal of African History. 7- (1): 79–93. doi:10.1017/S0021853700006095.
  3. ↑ Bachero Bachero, Juan Luis (2023). "La lucha contra la trata de esclavos en el Caribe: Los Tribunales del Vicealmirantazgo británicos, 1807–1825". Hispanic American Historical Review. 103 (4): 589–616. doi:10.1215/00182168-10798074.
  4. ↑ Davis, P. "Background". William Loney RN. P Davis. Retrieved 18 May 2016.
  5. ↑ Helfman, Tara (2006). "The Court of Vice Admiralty at Sierra Leone and the Abolition of the West African Slave Trade". Yale Law Journal. 115 (5): 1122–1156. doi:10.2307/20455647. JSTOR   20455647 . Retrieved 27 February 2016.
  6. ↑ Shreeve, Whittaker (18 June 1847). "African Trade, the Horrors of Slave Trade Aiding, Abetting etc". The South Australian: 4. Retrieved 6 September 2014.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Hertslet, Lewis (1820). A Complete collection of the treaties and conventions at present subsisting between Great Britain & foreign powers, so far as they relate to commerce and navigation, to the repression and abolition of the slave trade. Vol. II. Whitehall: T. Egerton, bookseller to the Ordnance.
  8. 1 2 "Verbod van slavenhandel". ANDA Suriname. Retrieved 13 March 2017.
  9. ↑ Emmer 2011.
  10. ↑ Arnalte Barrera, Luis Arturo (1993). El tribunal mixto anglo-español de Sierra Leona (1819-1874). Tesis doctoral de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
  11. ↑ Lovejoy, Henry B. (2010). "The Registers of Liberated Africans of the Havana Slave Trade Commission: Transcription Methodology and Statistical Analysis". African Economic History. 38 (1): 107–125. doi:10.1353/aeh.2009.0003 (inactive 18 September 2025).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of September 2025 (link)
  12. ↑ Roldán de Montaud, Inés (2011). "En los borrosos confines de la libertad: el caso de los negros emancipados en Cuba, 1817-1870". Revista de Indias. 71 (251): 159–192. doi:10.3989/revindias.2011.007.
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