Abstract
Far too little scholarly attention has been devoted to the analysis of eighteenth-century prize systems, and to their integral role in the dynamics of the slave trade. Colonial vice-admiralty courts perpetuated the cession, acquisition, and transfer of slaves as commodities, and the enslavement of black mariners on the grounds of blackness as presumption of slavery. Researching the forgotten histories of ‘prize negroes’ would allow international legal scholarship to uncover one of the most racialised aspects of the laws of nations in the modern age. At the intersection of war, trade and slavery, the history of ‘prize negroes’ represents one of the absences from the history of international law which would desperately need more scholarly attention to be compensated for. Unlike many others among the numerous dark sides of the history of the discipline, the ‘inglorious past’ of prize law is still there, either mostly submerged or largely overlooked.