The Introduction lays out the contextual background to the themes and elements that are brought together to shape the monograph’s arguments. It positions the monograph within the existing literature on the Seven Years’ War and the history of neutrality in order to establish how it builds upon these bodies of work to incorporate law as a necessary element of strategic analysis. The core hypotheses and arguments of the book are also established. First, that neutrality was a dynamic role for maritime nations such as Spain and the Dutch Republic which had as much of an influencing effect on British strategic thinking as did affairs with belligerent nations. Second, that the Court of Prize Appeal played a critical role within the three-pronged maritime strategy of maintaining foreign confidence in British maritime law and its court system; balancing the interests of British privateers and neutral carriers of commerce in the prize court system; and destroying French seaborne trade through commerce predation. Third, that British maritime strategic concerns shaped and created new legal rules, norms, and precedents within the prize court system that would then serve to clarify and cement British, Spanish, and Dutch understandings of neutral rights and international maritime law.

This chapter begins Part III of the book which focuses on Anglo-Spanish relations during the Seven Years’ War and focuses particularly on the first two Spanish cases to come before the Court of Prize Appeal. This serves as a contextual chapter for Anglo- Spanish affairs and introduces the specific people and dynamics within the Spanish Court that were critical to negotiations over neutrality. It also introduces the cases of the San Juan Baptista and the Jesús, Maria, y José. The chapter highlights that the political and diplomatic contexts of Anglo-Spanish relations were markedly different from those of Anglo-Dutch relations and that preserving Spanish neutrality was, in many ways, much more fraught and complicated. This was due largely to internal Spanish political events (such as the death of King Ferdinand VI and the death of the British ambassador to Spain) and Anglo-Spanish maritime grievances that went beyond questions of prize-taking but spoke to the core of Spanish fears that British maritime hegemony would drastically alter the power of balance in the Americas and adversely affect neutral nations.

This chapter provides a contextual overview of the development and operation of the British prize court system. It then introduces the specific legal rules and precedents, specifically the Rule of the War of 1756, that were developed by Britain during the Seven Years’ War in the pursuit of negotiating neutral rights to Britain’s strategic advantage. The chapter critiques the historiography on the Rule of the War of 1756 and makes the argument that the development of the rule and its influence in subsequent wars can only be understood if its strategic drivers are taken into account. The Rule, in other words, was as much a creation of strategic thinking as it was of legal thinking.

This chapter focuses on the court cases of the Dutch ships the Maria Theresa and the America. It analyses the legal arguments behind the condemnation of each ship as legal prize and how these arguments are connected to, and differ from, Anglo-Dutch negotiations over neutral rights and the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1674. The chapter demonstrates that the Anglo-Dutch negotiations at the governmental level were led by four key British figures: William Pitt, Lord Holdernesse, the Duke of Newcastle, and Lord Hardwicke. Their connections with their Dutch counterparts were largely managed through Joseph Yorke who was the British representative to the Dutch Republic. These negotiations were driven by maritime strategic considerations. In contrast, early decisions taken in the High Court of Admiralty created friction between the Dutch and British governments. The Dutch believed that the condemnation of their ships was arbitrary and an abuse of Dutch neutral rights. The chapter reveals that in order to resolve this tension, the British government determined to encourage the Dutch to appeal the decisions from the High Court of Admiralty and promised that the cases would be fairly determined in the Court of Prize Appeal where decisions could be influenced and shaped by Lord Hardwicke.

Chapter 4 examines the resurgent privateering of the early nineteenth century in order to analyze the way in which trans-imperial networks of the Leeward Islands were connected to wider regional and oceanic networks. Privateering as a political and strategic tool was a thoroughly Atlantic phenomenon, with actors on either side of the ocean employing privateers in order to weaken the maritime sinews of their rivals or to project claims of sovereignty to foreign powers. The Caribbean was at the center of the practice as the region provided fertile ground for recruiting crews, outfitting vessels, and raiding rival ships. The chapter also delves into the specifics of the colonial prize court system, particularly in the British Empire, in order to illuminate the legal framework for privateering and the crucial role played by vice admiralty courts in imperial clashes over jurisdiction and politico-legal power