Definition Contraband

Of course, as Singer notes, “smuggling items smuggled into a prison is not a national security emergency.” Then came half a century where bookstores and theaters had nothing but women`s art, and vintage cars like you exchanged records full of hip-hop and smuggled novels with worn corners. “Contraband Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/contraband. Retrieved 9 January 2022. He accuses the latter of various illegal and cunning acts, including the shipment of gold and smuggled jewelry to Mexico. He was convicted of perjury, served 30 days and resumed a bold career in smuggling. Contra means “against” (contradict, opposite) and bando means “prohibition”, so smuggling simply means “against a prohibition” or despite the rules. Place of origin: Italy. Somehow, the word was imported by the English, but there are no laws against the importation of words, so it would be an exaggeration to say that smuggling itself is smuggling. Martial law on smuggling developed in the late European Middle Ages and was constantly developed to meet the needs of the great 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 over the categories of cargo that could be confiscated in the same way as weapons. He proposed a triple classification, a precursor to several different classifications, listed from time to time with no visible impact on practice. Governments issued proclamations listing the items they would confiscate, and these differed from country to country and from war to war.

The progress of Irish wool factories has caused even more concern and indignation than the smuggling trade with France. Many treaties defining smuggling have been concluded between nations. In times of war, the nations involved invariably violated agreements and formulated their own definitions, as the luck of war showed. The London Declaration, drafted at the London Naval Conference of 1908-1909 and partially effective by most European sailors at the beginning of the First World War, established complete classifications of absolute and conditional smuggling. As the war unfolded, the lists of items of each category were constantly revised by the various belligerents, despite the protests of the neutral powers active in the transport trade. Until 1916, the list of conditional contraband goods included virtually all marine cargoes. After that, for the duration of the First World War, almost all cargo en route to an enemy nation was treated as war contraband by interceptors, regardless of the type of cargo. A similar policy was initiated by the belligerent powers at the beginning of the Second World War.

Their merchants, particularly in New England, operated a lively and extremely profitable contraband trade. In 2013, smugglers in São Paulo were ready to ship a huge stockpile of fossils from the port of Santos, but before they could, local police stormed and recovered the contraband. These smuggling networks – the smuggled molasses that played a role in the American Revolution – also functioned as means of information. Ironically, the data suggests that in many cases, those who are more likely to be targeted are less likely to be smuggled or to have broken laws. These sample phrases are automatically selected from various online information sources to reflect the current use of the word “contraband.” The opinions expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us your feedback. Yazbek says no one takes names and no one looks for weapons or other contraband. Although the declaration was never ratified, it was close enough to a general consensus to be provisionally adopted by both sides when World War I broke out in 1914. However, the demands of total war led to items such as rubber, cotton and soap being moved from the free list to absolute smuggling. The explanation eventually became irrelevant and was explicitly rejected in 1916. borrowed from Central French and Italian; Central French smuggling, borrowed from the Italian contrabando (later contrabbando), originally Upper Italian (Venetian) chontrabando (medieval Latin of Venice contrabannum), to contra- contra- + bando “proclamation, edict, law”, borrowed from the Gothic bandwo “sign, signal” – more at the entrance of volume 3 From 1908 to 1909, however, 10 naval powers met in London to elaborate an agreed code on bellicose restrictions on neutral trade. The resulting London Declaration classifies goods as (1) absolute contraband; (2) conditional smuggling; and (3) free of charge.

The first class, military equipment, was seized on its way to any target in enemy territory. The second class consisted of items such as food, clothing, and rolling stock, which could only be treated as smuggling if they were en route to an enemy`s government or armed forces. The third class listed goods that were not subject to registration. Under the conditions of modern warfare, in which armed conflicts have largely become a struggle involving the entire population of competing powers, virtually all goods are classified by the belligerents as absolute contraband. .