From Oxford University Press: There is a broad consensus among
scholars that the idea of human rights was a product of the
Enlightenment but that a self-conscious and broad-based human
rights movement focused on international law only began after
World War II. In this narrative, the nineteenth century's
absence is conspicuous--few have considered that era seriously,
much less written books on it. But as Jenny Martinez shows in
this novel interpretation of the roots of human rights law, the
foundation of the movement that we know today was a product of
one of the nineteenth century's central moral causes: the
movement to ban the international slave trade. Originating in
England in the late eighteenth century, abolitionism achieved
remarkable success over the course of the nineteenth century.
Martinez focuses in particular on the international admiralty
courts, which tried the crews of captured slave ships. The
courts, which were based in the Caribbean, West Africa, Cape
Town, and Brazil, helped free at least 8