Law Commons^™

Punishing Our Own Rascals: Great Britain, The United States, And The Right To Search During The Era Of Slave Trade Suppression, Mark T. Haggard

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the relationship between the United States and Great Britain during the era of slave trade suppression in the nineteenth century. Two ideals of international relations came into conflict when Great Britain’s humanitarian drive to rid the world of the international slave trade ran headlong into the United States’ claims to sovereignty under the Law of Nations. Under international maritime law a ship is the sovereign territory of the nation under whose flag it sails; the forcible boarding of a ship is tantamount to an invasion of the country itself. Britain sought to circumvent this rule in the …