This chapter asks whether, and to what extent, modern international arbitration practice is related to pre-twentieth-century dispute settlement methods. It argues that international arbitration can be analyzed within (1) the narrow context of (private) arbitrations practiced in local trade associations and (2) the broader context of (public) international adjudication, which has evolved considerably over time. While it does not claim that these forms of arbitration, which were important mechanisms in the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, are the sole “ancestors” of the modern international arbitration system, it shows how some of their characteristics were developed and became defining features of modern international arbitration practice. This chapter thus attempts to explore the complex genealogy (or genealogies) of international arbitration by exploring two influential lines that can be identified at a time when “arbitration” had various meanings and the field was less structured than it is today.

Chapter 5 begins by briefly looking at the British Slave Trade Act of 1807, which also marked the beginning of the Royal Navy’s operations off the coast of West Africa. It concentrates on the developments that led from a national ban and its unilateral military enforcement by the United Kingdom to its international and multilateral implementation. A crucial turning point is marked by the Congress of Vienna, at which the political pressure built up by the abolitionists was so great that, for the first time, the proscription of the slave trade was jointly proclaimed and enshrined as a humanitarian norm in international law. This interdict then formed the point of reference for a series of highly controversial negotiations between the European states to decide on collective measures to be taken against this border-crossing problem. A bilateral approach between Britain and the continental powers finally resulted in a mechanism for implementation to be set up, which consisted of a previously unheard of combination of military and legal measures and which, in the shape of the Mixed Commissions for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, produced one of the first forms of international jurisdiction.