The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law

Jenny Martinez shows in this groundbreaking volume that the international human rights movement has its roots in one of the nineteenth century's central moral causes: the movement to ban the international slave trade. 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, buried in the dusty archives of admiralty courts, ships' logs, and the British foreign office, Martinez uncovers the foundations of contemporary human rights law: 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.