The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law

The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law
ISBN-10
0195391624
ISBN-13
9780195391626
Category
History
Pages
254
Language
English
Published
2012-01-04
Publisher
OUP USA
Author
Jenny S. Martinez

Description

As Jenny Martinez shows in this groundbreaking new book, the international human rights law that we know today is not solely a post-World War II development, as most scholars claim, but rather has roots in one of the nineteenth century's central moral causes: the movement to ban the international slave trade. Martinez focuses in particular on international courts for the suppression of the slave trade. The courts, which were created by treaties and based in the Caribbean, West Africa,Cape Town, and Brazil, helped free more than 80,000 Africans from captured slave ships between 1807 and 1871. Here then, 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 exercising jurisdiction over crimes against humanity" long before the Nuremberg trials. Fueled by a powerful thesis and drawing on novel evidence, Martinez's work will reshape the fields of human rights history and international human rights law."

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