Micro-Diplomacy and the Illegal Slave Trade: Women, Kidnapping, and Freedom Suits in the Atlantic World

Once the British moved to police and end the African slave trade on humanitarian grounds, enslaved Africans and African Americans around the Atlantic World sometimes claimed to be British subjects in an effort to gain their freedom. Their cases -- tried in the courts, negotiated through diplomatic channels, and sometimes fought militarily --were often successful. These “micro-diplomatic” cases turned on questions of citizenship, on whether or not these individuals belonged to a particular state or nation – the idea of individual rights in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was deeply imbedded in the rights of citizens rather than in some universal human right. Once the British became the chief foes of the slave trade and included not only blacks born in British territory, but also those under British protection in Sierra Leone, the Caribbean and elsewhere as subjects worthy of British protection, enslaved Africans and African Americans around the Atlantic world understood the potential value of British citizenship and exploited this juridical fissure in the fabric of slavery whenever they could. Men and women claimed it and won their freedom through it, and this paper will focus on representative cases brought by women in Cuba and Sierra Leone. Slave resistance sometimes occurred in the courtroom or in cooperation with officials who were in a position to make a difference. Their cases are reminders, if any is needed, that Africans and enslaved African Americans understood local, national and even international legalities that could break the shackles of slavery and knew how to negotiate them. These cases raised important issues of citizenship and sovereignty, of international human rights, and the relationship between the citizen and the state, issues that continue to resonate today.