This book offers an exciting new take on the relationship between law and power. The 1856 Declaration of Paris marks the precise moment when international law became universal, and was an aggressive and successful British move to end privateering forever then the United States' main weapon in case of war with Britain.Introduction: Power, Law and the Declaration of Paris 1. 'More serious than the Eastern question itself' The Crimean War Compromise 2. The Crimean War and Maritime Law 3. 'Catching Brother Jonathan in the trap which he laid for us' The Genesis of the Declaration of Paris 4. 'That moral league of nations against the United States' - The Declaration of Paris and the Marcy Amendment 5. 'The United States have a vote in framing the maritime law of this age' The Cass Memorandum and Bremen's Campaign for the Marcy Amendment 6. The Declaration of Paris and the American Civil War 7. 'Announcing our withdrawal from the Declaration' - The Declaration of Paris and the Franco-German War of 1870 Conclusion: The Rise and Fall of the Declaration of Paris
Jan Lemnitzer has awakened the 1856 Declaration of Paris from a very long sleep, and what an awakening it is! The Declaration of Paris, issued at the end of the Crimean War, is the grandfather of all modern international law agreements on the conduct of war, and it had a direct influence on both the US Navy's blockade of the Confederate States in the American Civil War and the attempted blockades of the Franco-Prussian War. It is a story of diplomats and captains, of lawyers and judges, and all with the threat of the most dire international conflicts hanging behind them. Here is a vast contribution to the American Civil War, European diplomatic history, and the laws of nations. - Professor Allen Carl Guelzo, Gettysburg College, USA, New York Times best-selling
author of Gettysburg: The Last Invasion
Jan Martin Lemnitzer reveals the forgotten origins of the modern lCī