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Freedom’S Paradoxes: A Case Study Of The Slave Schooner Julita, Lucy Wickstrom

The Forum: Journal of History

After Great Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, the British Royal Navy committed one-fifth of its manpower to the cause of capturing other nations’ illegal slave ships. This effort to enforce abolition liberated 250,000 displaced Africans over the course of the nineteenth century and brought the crews that had carried them before officials to have their cases tried. Because of the careful documentation of these cases by the Mixed Commissions, there is a wealth of primary sources detailing the circumstances of these captures and the human beings claimed as cargo. This paper utilizes a case study of one such …