Book contents
- the cambridge history of rights
- The Cambridge History of Rights
- The Cambridge History of Rights
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors to Volume IV
- General Introduction
- A Note on Translations
- Introduction to Volume IV
- Part I A Revolution in Rights?
- Part II Postrevolutionary Rights
- Part III Rights and Empires
- 18 Rights and Empires
- 19 Rights in Late Mughal and Early Colonial India
- 20 Rights in the Americas
- 21 The Free Sea
- 22 Abolition and Imperialism in Africa
- 23 Rights in Pan-Asian, Pan-Islamic, and Pan-African Thought
- 24 Indigenous Rights in Settler Colonies
- 25 Catholicism and Rights
- 26 (Human) Rights Associations (1775–1898)
- Index
- References
21 - The Free Sea
An Antislavery Idea of Human Rights
from Part III - Rights and Empires
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2025
Book contents
- the cambridge history of rights
- The Cambridge History of Rights
- The Cambridge History of Rights
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors to Volume IV
- General Introduction
- A Note on Translations
- Introduction to Volume IV
- Part I A Revolution in Rights?
- Part II Postrevolutionary Rights
- Part III Rights and Empires
- 18 Rights and Empires
- 19 Rights in Late Mughal and Early Colonial India
- 20 Rights in the Americas
- 21 The Free Sea
- 22 Abolition and Imperialism in Africa
- 23 Rights in Pan-Asian, Pan-Islamic, and Pan-African Thought
- 24 Indigenous Rights in Settler Colonies
- 25 Catholicism and Rights
- 26 (Human) Rights Associations (1775–1898)
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter studies how the ocean became a realm of human rights aspiration. It illuminates the emergence of an oceanic idea of human rights as an antislavery work, the invention of African Americans who had been held as slaves as well as of freeborn abolitionists. In antislavery thought, the ocean constituted not a space for traversing, creating wealth, or making war – of commerce and of empire – but a realm of natural human liberty. The chapter traces the origins of this idea to a slave rebellion aboard an American ship sailing on the Atlantic ocean in 1841– a coastwise slave trade voyage– and the conflict of laws caused by the rebellion. Out of this conflict, the chapter argues, emerged emancipatory doctrine that contributed to a burgeoning antislavery invocation of human rights while transforming a conception of the free sea that was centuries old.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Rights , pp. 499 - 522Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024
References
Further Reading
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