Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law

The Paris Declaration respecting Maritime Law of 16 April 1856 was an international multilateral treaty agreed to by the warring parties in the Crimean War gathered at the Congress at Paris after the peace treaty of Paris had been signed in March 1856. As an important juridical novelty in international law the treaty for the first time created the possibility for nations that were not involved in the establishment of the agreement and did not sign, to become a party by acceding the declaration afterwards.^[1] So did altogether 55 nations, which otherwise would have been impossible in such a short period. This represented a large step in the globalisation of international law.

The primary goal of France and Great Britain was to abolish privateering, a part of naval warfare whereby a belligerent party gave formal permission to privately owned ships by letters of marque to seize enemy vessels. By disrupting commerce, privateers could be effective against enemies that depended on trade and force them to deploy their warships to protect their merchant ships. In this way, maritime nations could wage war against larger land-based powers by the destruction of their commerce. The Paris Declaration established international policies related to neutral and belligerent shipping on the high seas, introducing new rules for prizes of war, a piece of enemy property seized by a belligerent party during or after a war or battle, typically at sea.^[2] The plenipotentiaries agreed on three major points: free ships make free goods, effective blockade, and no privateering. In return for surrendering the practice of seizing neutral goods on enemy ships, France insisted on Britain's abandoning its Rule of 1756 prohibiting neutral assumption of enemy coastal and colonial trade.^[3]