contraband

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contraband

international law

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Related Topics:: law of war; smuggling

contraband, in the laws of war, goods that may not be shipped to a belligerent because they serve a military purpose.

The laws of war relating to contraband developed in the later European Middle Ages and have undergone continual development in order to meet the needs of the major maritime powers. In his De jure belli ac pacis (1625; On the Law of War and Peace), Hugo Grotius took note of a long-standing controversy in regard to what categories of cargo might be confiscated in the same way as weapons. He suggested a threefold classification, the forerunner of several different classifications enumerated from time to time with no visible effect on practice. Governments have issued proclamations listing the items they would seize, and these differed from country to country and from war to war.

From 1908 to 1909, however, 10 naval powers met in London to draw up an agreed code regarding belligerent restrictions on neutral trade. The resulting Declaration of London classified goods as (1) absolute contraband; (2) conditional contraband; and (3) free. The first class, military equipment, was subject to seizure on its way to any destination in enemy territory. The second class consisted of items such as food, clothing, and rolling stock, which were to be treated as contraband only if in transit to the government or armed forces of an enemy. The third class listed goods not subject to capture.

Though never ratified, the declaration was near enough to a general consensus to be provisionally adopted by both sides when World War I broke out in 1914. The demands of total war, however, resulted in such items as rubber, cotton, and soap being moved from the free list to absolute contraband. The declaration eventually became irrelevant and was explicitly discarded in 1916.

Apart from the difficulty of arriving at an agreed classification of contraband, a major problem was posed by maritime trade between neutrals. Goods shipped by one neutral to another were in principle free, but British and American practice in the 19th century, under the doctrine of “continuous voyage,” extended the right to seizure of goods that, though on their way to a neutral destination, were to be forwarded to an enemy. The trend was thus toward the right to deprive an enemy of any benefits of neutral trade. This was emphasized during World War I by the Allied imposition of quotas on European neutrals to prevent them from supplying the enemy from their own stocks, which they would then replace from foreign sources.

In 1939 proclamations issued by the Allied powers and by Germany again differentiated between absolute and conditional contraband. The only secure maritime trade left to neutrals was that covered by the naval certificates issued by belligerents to approved shippers and cargos. This practice, originated by the English in 1590 and used in World War I, was greatly extended during World War II. Its widespread adoption amounted to official assertion that, in time of war, trade by sea could be conducted only with the approval of belligerents.

smuggling

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smuggling

criminal law

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Article History

Key People:: Meyer Lansky; Bugsy Siegel; Veerappan; Taoka Kazuo

Related Topics:: crime; underground economy; contraband

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smuggling, conveyance of things by stealth, particularly the clandestine movement of goods to evade customs duties or import or export restrictions.

Smuggling flourishes wherever there are high-revenue duties (e.g., on tea, spirits, and silks in 18th-century England, coffee in many European countries, and tobacco almost everywhere) or prohibitions on importation (narcotics) or on exportation (arms and currency).

Smuggling is probably as old as the first tax or regulation on trade. In the 18th century, tea, tobacco, spices, silks, and spirits were smuggled into England in quantities exceeding those brought in legitimately. In France smuggling against the tobacco monopoly and the exorbitant tax on salt became widespread. Britain could not enforce its mercantilist policy of requiring its colonies to trade with the rest of the world only through the mother country, and by 1744 more than 40 vessels from the American colonies were trading directly with the Spanish empire.

Attempts by the Chinese government to stop the smuggling of opium led to the opium war of the 1840s. British India in the 19th century suffered smuggling of salt between states with different tax rates, while smuggling of all kinds of dutiable goods occurred between Goa and India and between Gibraltar and Spain. In the latter half of the 19th century, smuggling developed in Africa, particularly of spirits from the Portuguese colonies into the Boer states and from French colonies into the Gold Coast and Nigeria.

During the 13 years of the prohibition of the sale of liquor in the United States (1920–33), fleets of ships carried liquor from Europe and the West Indies to the Atlantic coast, while truckloads were run all along the Canadian frontier. In the second half of the 20th century, such drugs as heroin, cocaine, and cannabis were products for smuggling worldwide.

Methods of smuggling change little; all are variants of two main techniques: the undetected running of cargoes across frontiers and the concealment of goods in unlikely places on ships or cars, in baggage or cargo, or on the person.