The Neirsée Incident of 1828 and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
This paper examines the Neirsée incident of 1828, in which the British Royal Navy intercepted a French slave ship, triggering a significant diplomatic crisis between Britain and France. Drawing on Rafe Blaufarb and Liz Clarke's Inhuman Traffick, the paper explores the competing national perspectives revealed by primary sources, including correspondence from Guadeloupe's colonial governor and writings by British naval officers. It addresses what upset each nation — Britain's frustration with the slave trade's persistence, and France's resentment of British interference — and considers the moral and legal dimensions of the slaves' capture. The incident illustrates the profound difficulty of dismantling the transatlantic slave trade within a deeply interconnected global economy.
- Introduction: The Neirsée Incident in Historical Context: Global economy's dependence on the slave trade
- Primary Sources and the Challenge of Multiple Perspectives: British and French sources used by Blaufarb
- The Incident and Its Immediate Aftermath: British naval interception and Guadeloupe aftermath
- Britain vs. France: Competing National Grievances: Diplomatic tensions and colonial versus European attitudes
- The Question of Fairness in the Capture of the Slaves: Property claims versus humanitarian intervention debate
- Conclusion: The Neirsée Incident and the Path to Abolition: Incident's role in advancing abolition dialogue
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper grounds its argument in a specific historical event, using the Neirsée incident as a focused case study to illuminate broader tensions in early international abolitionism.
- It balances multiple national perspectives — British, French metropolitan, and French colonial — demonstrating awareness of how geography and economic interest shaped attitudes toward the slave trade.
- The paper engages directly with the evidentiary basis of its primary source text, acknowledging gaps (e.g., the limited Sierra Leone records and the absence of slave or Kru perspectives) rather than overstating the available evidence.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper models source-critical analysis by distinguishing between the reliability and availability of British versus French primary sources, and by noting whose voices are missing from the historical record. This reflexive engagement with historiographical limitations strengthens rather than undermines the argument.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a framing thesis about the global economy's dependence on the slave trade, then introduces the primary sources and their limitations. It narrates the incident chronologically before pivoting to the diplomatic fallout. The final section addresses the paper's core normative question — the fairness of the British intervention — by contrasting the moral and legal justifications offered by each side. The argument moves logically from context, to evidence, to event, to analysis.
Introduction: The Neirsée Incident in Historical Context
Although Britain and France were formally attempting to dismantle the transatlantic slave trade, the global economy had come to depend on it. The Neirsée incident of 1828 reveals the difficulties inherent in ending the slave trade due to the deep interconnectedness of that economy. For several years prior to the incident, Britain had outlawed the trafficking of enslaved people, which is why the British Navy intervened and seized the ship. Yet Britain did not hold an international mandate to abolish slave trafficking altogether. The human cargo on board the Neirsée was worth far too much to the businesspeople involved on both sides of the Atlantic — in colonial territories and in Africa alike.
In Inhuman Traffick, Rafe Blaufarb and Liz Clarke rely on primary sources from both Britain and France to demonstrate what occurred before, during, and after the Neirsée incident. The British sources were more reliable and easier to obtain, which is why the French side of the story is less fully told than the British account. Nevertheless, Blaufarb does obtain French primary sources, chiefly the record books of the governor of Guadeloupe, the Baron des Routours. This source reveals how the French were more ambivalent than the British regarding the continuation of the transatlantic slave trade. The British primary sources used in Inhuman Traffick include Admiral Fleming's extensive writings, the records of Captain Owen, and the logs of British crewmen. Taken together, these documents illuminate what was so upsetting about the Neirsée incident from multiple perspectives.
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