The Children of the Desert and the Laws of the Sea: Austria, Great Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and the Mediterranean Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century
Аннотация:S CAPTAIN in the Austrian merchant marine, not a lawyer, but he knew something about Austrian law."There can be no slaves on an Austrian ship," he declared, referring to §95 of the 1852 penal code, which stated that anyone who set foot on Austrian soil or on board an Austrian ship would become instantly free. 1 The occasion for his statement was a proposed search of his steamship, the Mars, on June 3, 1870, while it was docked at Smyrna (today's Izmir) en route from Alexandria to Constantinople. 2 Druscovich attempted to forestall the search, which would have been conducted by representatives of the British consulate in Smyrna looking for slaves on board, "in order," he explained, "to protect the rights and honor of our [Austrian] flag." 3 In due course, the British were allowed to search the ship in the presence of the Austro-Hungarian consul.What they found showed that more than Druscovich's personal honor or even Austria's sovereignty over its own ships was at risk.The search of the Mars, like countless other such searches that
