International Arbitration Lecture

The International Arbitration Lecture series continues to attract guest speakers from the four corners of the world to give their insights into the challenges facing international arbitration.

25th Annual Clayton Utz and University of Sydney International Arbitration Lecture

Topic: The Alabama Claims Arbitration: A Confederate cruiser’s visit to the Colony of Victoria

Speaker: Christopher Thomas KC

Details: Wednesday, 30 September 2026, Federal Court of Australia, Sydney

The 1872 Alabama Claims arbitration between the United States and Great Britain is often marked as the starting point of modern international dispute resolution. Sitting in Geneva, a five-member tribunal found Britain responsible for the acts of certain Confederate cruisers built or supplied from British territory during the American Civil War.

The case had an Australian dimension. In January 1865, the Confederate cruiser CSS Shenandoah entered Hobsons Bay, Victoria. After assuring the Governor that he would respect British neutrality, the ship’s master quietly did the opposite — recruiting crew under cover of darkness before sailing at dawn for the North Pacific to attack the American whaling fleet.

Seven years later, that brief stop at Hobsons Bay returned to haunt Britain. By a 3–2 majority, the tribunal held Britain liable for the Shenandoah’s depredations — a result that Britain’s counsel denounced as “monstrous.”

Although the arbitration now holds iconic status in international law, the proceedings looked nothing like modern arbitration. The real story is by turns startling, funny, and downright bizarre.

Drawing on decades as counsel and arbitrator in international disputes, Christopher Thomas KC has spent years reconstructing what really happened. Through archival research across several countries, he has examined the private correspondence and diaries of the figures who shaped the treaty that sent the case to arbitration and those who later took part in the arbitration.

In this, the 25th Clayton Utz / University of Sydney International Arbitration Lecture, Mr Thomas revisits this landmark dispute through the lens of the Shenandoah’s stop in Melbourne — a visit that helped to put a global power on trial.