France, Great Britain, and the Repression of the Slave Trade, 1841-1845

Abstract

Modern historians generally agree that during the so-called entente cordiale of the early 1840s Anglo-French relations were anything but cordial. Despite the mutual desire of Lord Aberdeen in England and Fran(ois Guizot in France to realize a friendly understanding after the Eastern crisis of 1840, relations between the Tory government and the Soult-Guizot ministry were raked by a series of trials and tribulations, such as those arising from the Pritchard affair, the proposed Franco-Belgian customs union, and FrancoBritish rivalry in Spain. The nature of these disputes and their role in undermining the Anglo-French rapprochement between 1841 and 1846 have been thoroughly examined by historians.1 Relatively little is known, however, about another affair which also affected relations between France and Great Britain in the early 1840s. From 1841 to 1845 a disagreement over measures necessary to suppress the transatlantic slave trade, the of question, tended to divide not only the two governments but the two peoples.2 A detailed study of the right of search controversy clearly indicates the