The British abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and its connection with the development of international law in the nineteenth century has become a popular topic within the history of international law. A teleological and triumphalist interpretation has led some historians to view the legal mechanisms used by Britain in its abolition campaign, as the forerunners of an international human rights regime. Others have pointed out the precedential value of treaties between Western powers and the establishment of the so-called courts of mixed commission for the general growth of positive international law. Recently, authors have stressed the darker side of the abolition campaign and have described its inherently imperialist nature as a form of cultural imperialism.
Indeed, a perspective that replaces the traditional focus of international law and empire studies on legal doctrine by one that includes the study of the way international law was used in practice in West Africa paints a very different picture of abolition. From the 1840s onwards the British fight against the slave trade changed from a reliance on inter-Western treaties of abolition to increased efforts to stamp out the supply of slaves in West Africa through treaties with African rulers. This paper traces the resistance levied against British slave trade treaties in West Africa. It will illustrate how West African rulers strove to insert favorable clauses in the treaties or strategically undermined their enforcement through strategies of evasion and the use of force. It finally argues that abolitionist international law was not the product of a top-down centrally organised process, but was subject to constant Anglo-African negotiation and shifting power relations.