Extradition, Transnational Crime and Diplomacy: The South Atlantic in the Age of Capital

Abstract

In the year of 1872 alone, Brazil signed as many criminal extradition treaties as it had in the period since its independence in 1822. Most of these agreements were signed not with countries sharing land borders with the country but rather with nations across the Atlantic: Spain, Great Britain, Italy, and Portugal with unsuccessful concomitant negotiations held with France and the Netherlands. This study examines the negotiations behind these agreements (or lack thereof), highlighting the issues in dispute and the consensus established in the provisions of these treaties. It will be argued how these agreements stemmed both from the perceptions of diplomats around how the impacts of the increasing ease and speed of mobility of criminals might shape the nature of criminal practices and from the awareness that diplomacy had a role to play in the sphere of criminal justice. Extradition thus emerges as a privileged theme for discussing sovereignty and citizenship, crime and penal cultures.