Definition
A term drawn from French marine law, referring to contraband — goods prohibited by law from being imported, exported, or traded. The word captures two interrelated concepts: (1) goods whose commerce is forbidden outright, and (2) the act of contravening a public ban or royal proclamation (bande) by trafficking in such goods. In historical French maritime practice, the term carried both the sense of the prohibited cargo itself and the offense of violating the regulatory proclamation that established the prohibition.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not in standard modern English usage; the term is French in origin and remains primarily a term of French legal and historical writing.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined; subsumed under "contraband," from the same root, denoting goods prohibited by law or proclamation.
Editorial note: English-language legal writers absorbed the substance of contrebande into the term "contraband," losing the specific procedural nuance embedded in the French form — namely, that the offense was defined by contravention of a formal, published bande or proclamation. Researchers reading English sources will find the concept present but the procedural framing absent.
Common Confusion
Contrebande is frequently treated as a straightforward synonym for contraband in secondary literature, but the historical French usage is more precise. Contraband in Anglo-American law typically describes a category of goods; contrebande in French marine law also identified the violation of a specific sovereign act — the public ban. The distinction matters when reading French maritime insurance texts, where liability questions turned on whether the shipowner knew of the proclaimed prohibition, not merely the character of the cargo.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in French or Louisiana civil law materials, colonial maritime records, or prize law sources will encounter this term in contexts where English equivalents are imprecise. Key navigational points:
First, the term appears in French marine insurance treatises — most notably Emerigon's Traité des Assurances — in discussions of whether an insurer is discharged when cargo is seized as contrebande. The insurance law question and the maritime regulatory question are intertwined in these sources, and reading only the cargo-prohibition sense misses the coverage analysis.
Second, Louisiana legal materials present a particular research trap. Louisiana's civil law inheritance means contrebande surfaces in early statutes, colonial ordinances, and notarial records where the French regulatory meaning is operative. Anglo-American contraband doctrine does not map cleanly onto these sources.
Third, Burrill's note that the term encompasses "the contravention of a bande, ban, or public proclamation" signals that the offense category was broader than specific goods lists. Any proclamation-level prohibition could generate contrebande liability, which means researchers should look beyond customs and tariff records to broader royal or colonial regulatory orders when tracing what was prohibited at a given time.
Fourth, in prize law contexts — particularly disputes arising under French maritime ordinances — contrebande intersects with questions of neutral rights and enemy goods. The Ordonnance de la Marine (1681) is the primary source text; Burrill's citation to Liv. 1, tit. 5, art. 5 of that ordinance anchors the term in that framework.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the primary English-language legal dictionary source for this term, and his treatment is concise but structurally useful. He correctly identifies both the linguistic origin (contre + bande) and the dual meaning: contraband goods and the act of violating a proclamation. His citations to the Ordonnance de la Marine and to Emerigon's treatise point researchers to the two most authoritative primary and secondary sources respectively.
What Burrill does not address — and what researchers should not assume from his entry alone — is the developed doctrine around contrebande in the insurance context. Emerigon's treatment is considerably more elaborate, addressing questions of scienter, the effect of concealment on insurance contracts, and the distinction between absolute contraband and conditional contraband (goods prohibited only in time of war or under specific circumstances). The insurance and the regulatory dimensions require separate analysis that Burrill's brief entry does not provide.
No other major English-language historical legal dictionary gives contrebande a distinct entry, reflecting the term's status as a French technical term that English practice absorbed functionally without preserving terminologically.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is operative primarily in French civil law jurisdictions and in Louisiana materials drawing on that tradition. In international prize law, the concept bridges French and Anglo-American admiralty doctrine, but the specific term contrebande will appear in French-language sources and in Louisiana courts; common law jurisdictions use contraband exclusively.