The Paris Declaration respecting Maritime Law of 16 April 1856 was an international multilateral treaty agreed to by the warring parties in the Crimean War gathered at the Congress at Paris after the peace treaty of Paris had been signed in March 1856. As an important juridical novelty in international law the treaty for the first time created the possibility for nations that were not involved in the establishment of the agreement and did not sign, to become a party by acceding the declaration afterwards. [1] So did altogether 55 nations, which otherwise would have been impossible in such a short period. This represented a large step in the globalisation of international law.
The primary goal of France and Great Britain was to abolish privateering, a part of naval warfare whereby a belligerent party gave formal permission to privately owned ships by letters of marque to seize enemy vessels. By disrupting commerce, privateers could be effective against enemies that depended on trade and force them to deploy their warships to protect their merchant ships. In this way, maritime nations could wage war against larger land-based powers by the destruction of their commerce. The Paris Declaration established international policies related to neutral and belligerent shipping on the high seas, introducing new rules for prizes of war, a piece of enemy property seized by a belligerent party during or after a war or battle, typically at sea. [2] The plenipotentiaries agreed on three major points: free ships make free goods, effective blockade, and no privateering. In return for surrendering the practice of seizing neutral goods on enemy ships, France insisted on Britain's abandoning its Rule of 1756 prohibiting neutral assumption of enemy coastal and colonial trade. [3]
To put an end to the Crimean War (1853–1856), a series of diplomatic meetings were organised in Paris to negotiate peace, modelled after the Congress of Vienna. On the conclusion of the Treaty of Paris, which was signed on 30 March 1856, the plenipotentiaries assembled in conference also did agree on this declaration, at the suggestion of Count Walewski, the French Prime-Minister. [4] The declaration is the outcome of a modus vivendi signed between France and Britain at the dawn of the Crimean War in 1854 becoming war allies for the first time. These two powers had agreed that they would not seize enemy goods on neutral vessels nor neutral goods on enemy vessels. The belligerents had also agreed that they would not issue letters of marque, which they actually had not done during the war. At the close of this war the principal states of Europe concluded that private armed ships, maintained at private cost for private gain, and often necessarily for a long time beyond the reach of the regular naval force of the state, could not be kept under proper control. With the agreements written down in the Declaration of Paris these rules were confirmed and added to them the principle that blockades, in order to be obligatory, must be effective.
The Declaration did not as such make privateers into a new category of international criminals, but rather made it a treaty obligation of states that they refrain from commissioning privateers in the first place. Most states normally treated foreign privateers as pirates in any case. In the plain wordings of the Declaration:
- Privateering is and remains abolished;
- The neutral flag covers enemy's goods, with the exception of contraband of war;
- Neutral goods, with the exception of contraband of war, are not liable to capture under enemy's flag;
- Blockades, in order to be binding, must be effective-that is to say, maintained by a forge sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy. [5]
The Declaration has been signed by Great Britain, Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, Sardinia and Turkey Ultimately, 55 states, royal houses and free cities ratified the Declaration, including the Ottoman Empire. [6] This treaty established maritime law among the major powers of Europe. It represented the first multilateral attempt to codify in times of peace rules which were to be applicable in the event of war. This declaration bound only its signatories and nations that did accede later, when at war with each other, and left them free to use privateers when at war with other states.
The United States, which aimed at a complete exemption of non-contraband private property from capture at sea, withheld its formal adherence in 1857 when its “Marcy” amendment was not accepted by all powers, chiefly as a result of British influence. His proposed amendment would have exempted from seizure in time of war all private property that was not contraband, including enslaved persons. [7] The US was also keen on maintaining privateers. It argued that, not possessing a great navy, it would be obliged in time of war to rely largely upon merchant ships commissioned as war vessels, and that therefore the abolition of privateering would be entirely in favour of European powers, whose large navies rendered them practically independent of such aid. Several other maritime states did not accede to the declaration, such as China, Venezuela, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Honduras, and El Salvador. [6]
In 1861, during the American Civil War, the United States declared that it would respect the principles of the declaration during hostilities. The Confederacy agreed to the provisions except for the right of privateering, [8] and went on to extensively employ privateers as blockade runners. During the Spanish–American War of 1898, when the United States Government affirmed its policy of conducting hostilities in conformity with the dispositions of the declaration. Spain too, though not a party, declared its intention to abide by the declaration, but it expressly gave notice that it reserved its right to issue letters of marque. At the same time both belligerents organized services of auxiliary cruisers composed of merchant ships under the command of naval officers.
Some of the questions raised by this declaration were clarified by the 1907 Hague Convention.
The rules contained in this declaration later came to be considered as part of the general principles of international law and the United States too, though not formally a party, abides by provisions. [1]
The following states signed the Paris Declaration or did accede afterwards: [9]
Alexandre Florian Joseph, Count Colonna-Walewski, was a Polish and French politician and diplomat, the unacknowledged son of French emperor Napoleon I.
The Treaty of Paris of 1856 brought an end to the Crimean War between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the United Kingdom, the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia.
Contraband is any item that, relating to its nature, is illegal to be possessed or sold. It comprises goods that by their nature are considered too dangerous or offensive in the eyes of the legislator—termed contraband in se—and forbidden.
George William Frederick Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon, was an English diplomat and statesman from the Villiers family.
The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 are a series of international treaties and declarations negotiated at two international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands. Along with the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions were among the first formal statements of the laws of war and war crimes in the body of secular international law. A third conference was planned for 1914 and later rescheduled for 1915, but it did not take place because of the start of World War I.
Prize money refers in particular to naval prize money, usually arising in naval warfare, but also in other circumstances. It was a monetary reward paid in accordance with the prize law of a belligerent state to the crew of a ship belonging to the state, either a warship of its navy or a privateer vessel commissioned by the state. Prize money was most frequently awarded for the capture of enemy ships or of cargoes belonging to an enemy in time of war, either arrested in port at the outbreak of war or captured during the war in international waters or other waters not the territorial waters of a neutral state. Goods carried in neutral ships that are classed as contraband, being shipped to enemy-controlled territory and liable to be useful to it for making war, were also liable to be taken as prizes, but non-contraband goods belonging to neutrals were not. Claims for the award of prize money were usually heard in a prize court, which had to adjudicate the claim and condemn the prize before any distribution of cash or goods could be made to the captors.
The London Declaration concerning the Laws of Naval War was a proposed international code of maritime law, especially as it relates to wartime activities, in 1909 at the London Naval Conference by the leading European naval powers, the United States and Japan, after a multinational conference that occurred in 1908 in London. The declaration largely reiterated existing law, but dealt with many controversial points, including blockades, contraband and prize, and showed greater regard to the rights of neutral entities.
A pacific blockade is a blockade exercised by a great power for the purpose of bringing pressure to bear on a weaker state without actual war. It can be employed only as a measure of coercion by maritime powers able to bring into action such vastly superior forces to those the resisting state can dispose of that resistance is out of the question. The term was created by Laurent-Basile Hautefeuille, a French writer on international maritime law.
Visit and Search is the right of a belligerent warship, under certain conditions, to board a neutral merchant ship in order to verify its true character. The term probably refers to a misunderstanding of the French word visite, which in this context simply means search.
The Congress of Paris is the name for a series of diplomatic meetings held in 1856 in Paris, France, to negotiate peace between the warring powers in the Crimean War that had started almost three years earlier.
Freedom of navigation (FON) is a principle of law of the sea that ships flying the flag of any sovereign state shall not suffer interference from other states, apart from the exceptions provided for in international law. In the realm of international law, it has been defined as “freedom of movement for vessels, freedom to enter ports and to make use of plant and docks, to load and unload goods and to transport goods and passengers". This right is now also codified as Article 87(1)a of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
In admiralty law prizes are equipment, vehicles, vessels, and cargo captured during armed conflict. The most common use of prize in this sense is the capture of an enemy ship and her cargo as a prize of war. In the past, the capturing force would commonly be allotted a share of the worth of the captured prize. Nations often granted letters of marque that would entitle private parties to capture enemy property, usually ships. Once the ship was secured on friendly territory, she would be made the subject of a prize case: an in rem proceeding in which the court determined the status of the condemned property and the manner in which the property was to be disposed of.
The Treaty of Amity and Commerce established formal diplomatic and commercial relations between the United States and France during the American Revolutionary War. It was signed on February 6, 1778 in Paris, together with its sister agreement, the Treaty of Alliance, and a separate, secret clause allowing Spain and other European nations to join the alliance. These were the first treaties negotiated by the fledgling United States, and the resulting alliance proved pivotal to American victory in the war; the agreements are sometimes collectively known as the Franco-American Alliance or the Treaties of Alliance.
A Maritime Exclusion Zone (MEZ) is a military exclusion zone at sea. While it is an accepted concept internationally, it is not the subject of an explicit treaty, and there has been variation in naming including: "naval exclusion zone", "maritime security zone", "blockade zone", "maritime operational zone", "area subject to long distance blockade" and "area dangerous to shipping".
The Confederate privateers were privately owned ships that were authorized by the government of the Confederate States of America to attack the shipping of the United States. Although the appeal was to profit by capturing merchant vessels and seizing their cargoes, the government was most interested in diverting the efforts of the Union Navy away from the blockade of Southern ports, and perhaps to encourage European intervention in the conflict.
The First League of Armed Neutrality was an alliance of European naval powers between 1780 and 1783 which was intended to protect neutral shipping against the British Royal Navy's wartime policy of unlimited search of neutral shipping for French contraband during the American Revolutionary War and Anglo-French War. According to one estimate, 1 in 5 merchant vessels were searched by the Royal Navy under this policy. By September 1778, at least 59 ships had been taken prize – 8 Danish, 16 Swedish and 35 Dutch, as well as others from Prussia. Protests were enormous by every side involved.
The affair of Fielding and Bylandt was a brief naval engagement off the Isle of Wight on 31 December 1779 between a Royal Navy squadron, commanded by Commodore Charles Fielding, and a naval squadron of the Dutch Republic, commanded by rear-admiral Lodewijk van Bylandt, escorting a Dutch convoy. The Dutch and British were not yet at war, but the British wished to inspect the Dutch merchantmen for what they considered contraband destined for France, then engaged in the American War of Independence.
The Treaty of Amity and Commerce Between the United States and Sweden, officially A treaty of Amity and Commerce concluded between His Majesty the King of Sweden and the United States of North America, was a treaty signed on April 3, 1783 in Paris, France between the United States and the Kingdom of Sweden. The treaty officially established commercial relations between these two nations and was signed during the American Revolutionary War.
Cruiser rules is a colloquial phrase referring to the conventions regarding the attacking of a merchant ship by an armed vessel. Here cruiser is meant in its original meaning of a ship sent on an independent mission such as commerce raiding. A cruiser in modern naval terminology refers to a type of ship rather than its mission. Cruiser rules govern when it is permissible to open fire on an unarmed ship and the treatment of the crews of captured vessels. During both world wars, the question was raised of whether or not submarines were subject to cruiser rules. Initially, submarines attempted to obey them, but abandoned them as the war progressed.