Owen's Case: The Neirsee Affair Of 1828

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The Neirsee affair of 1828 revealed that British and French had opposing views on how to handle a situation of immoral circumstances. On one hand British believed that the selling of their citizens was completely unjust while the capturing of the Neirsee had reasoning, so they believed the French were doing this because of the recent defeat the French had suffered in the Napoleonic wars earlier. On the other hand the French believed the British capturing a boat with a French flag was unjust and the whole situation could have been avoided if they had just followed their original agreement, also upsetting to the French was up until 1807 the British had dominated the transatlantic slave trade and had only recently abolished the slave trade and …show more content…

Owen was livid when the British officials told him to abstain from capturing any vessels under a French flag and argued that this was the first time he had heard this and could have possibly changed his actions of capturing the Neirsee (Owen 174). In Owen’s opinion he had done his job, he captured a slaving ship flying a false French flag, and he had done no wrong. Especially because he had known it to be a fake French vessel and in fact a Dutch vessel carrying slaves (Owen 170). Of course British were outraged with their citizens being sold so they landed on the suspected island to search for them. This in their opinion was justified as well because the island had illegally bought people who were not even slaves so why shouldn’t they be allowed to save those citizens. The views of the British directly involved differ much from the officals because, in Owens case, fellow captain Badgeley had been killed in the incident so of course this situation was completely personal to …show more content…

On one hand the French officials were upset a boat with a French flag that was suspected to be a French boat was captured as well as upset that the British had gone on their island and searched it without any permission given, while on the other hand the British were upset the citizens and freed blacks were sold but also were aware the vessel was searched illegally. French officials acknowledged the citizens being sold was unjust but requested that the British make protests against the English officers to prevent another situation where a suspected French vessel is boarded (Portalis). British officials were quite calm as well and requested that their subjects were found and released back to them and that Captain Owens would be talked to so no future incidents would occur. These views of top officials differed then from people directly involved quite drastically. For example Owen was livid with the situation and believed the French to be in the wrong while he was just doing his job and doing it well. This makes sense because he was directly involved and suffered as part of the situation while British officials weren’t there and no doubt had other situations to handle so they were much more calm about it all. Around this time both British and French officials wanted slavery to come to an end, French were fully committed to end the slave trade (Hyde

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