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⚖️ The Zong and the Amistad: When Ships Became Courtrooms

Compare the Zong insurance dispute with the Amistad freedom case to see how maritime law exposed the violence and resistance built into slavery.

lessons

~15 min

to learn

🏛️ History

subject

Adults

level

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What you’ll learn

The Zong: when people became an insurance claimExplain how an insurance lawsuit over the Zong exposed the legal and commercial logic of the slave trade.A maritime claim about 132 deaths became abolitionist evidence, even though the court did not deliver a murder conviction.
The Amistad: whose law followed the shipCompare the Amistad litigation’s questions of kidnapping, treaty law, evidence, and freedom.The Supreme Court freed the surviving captives because the property claim rested on illegal kidnapping and slave trading.

Questions this course answers

Why did the Zong case reach court?

The legal action was an insurance dispute over the alleged jettison of cargo.

What made the Zong case politically powerful?

The case exposed the economic system behind the violence, even without a murder conviction.

What was central to the Amistad decision?

The Supreme Court rejected the ownership claim because the people had been illegally taken from Africa.

How did the two cases differ?

Their legal questions differed, although both revealed how law handled violence connected to slavery.

What should you notice in both stories?

Both cases became historically important because limited legal proceedings exposed wider structures of enslavement and resistance.

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