The Free Sea
The Free Sea

Author: Hugo Grotius

Publisher: Natural Law and Enlightenment

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13:

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The freedom of the seas -- meaning both the oceans of the world and coastal waters -- has been among the most contentious issues in international law for the past four hundred years. The most influential argument in favour of freedom of navigation, trade, and fishing was that put forth by the Dutch theorist Hugo Grotius in his 1609 'Mare Liberum'. "The Free Sea" was originally published in order to buttress Dutch claims of access to the lucrative markets of the East Indies. It had been composed as the twelfth chapter of a larger work, "De Jure Praedae" ('On the Law of Prize and Booty'), which Grotius had written to defend the Dutch East India Company's capture in 1603 of a rich Portuguese merchant ship in the Straits of Singapore. This new edition publishes the only translation of Grotius's masterpiece undertaken in his own lifetime -- a work left in manuscript by the English historian and promoter of overseas exploration Richard Hakluyt (1552-1616). This volume also contains William Welwod's critque of Grotius (reprinted for the first time since the seventeenth century) and Grotius's reply to Welwod. Taken together, these documents provide an indispensable introduction to modern ideas of sovereignty and property as they emerged from the early-modern tradition of natural law. -- Back cover.

Freedom of the Seas and US Foreign Policy
Freedom of the Seas and US Foreign Policy

Author: Connor Donahue

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-04-05

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 1040008704

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This book critically analyzes US political-military strategy by arguing that freedom of the seas discourse is fundamentally unfit for an era of maritime great power competition. The work conducts a genealogical intellectual history of freedom of the seas discourse in US foreign policy to show how the concept has evolved over time to facilitate American control over the global ocean space. It concludes that the contemporary discourse works to establish the high seas as an arena free from claims of sovereignty so that the United States, as the presumed unrivaled naval power, can intervene globally on behalf of its national interests. However, since sea control strategies depend on a preponderance of material force, as the United States wanes in relative material capability it becomes less able to support political-military strategies predicated on the assumption of global naval dominance. The book provides a timely commentary on the current geopolitical competition between the United States and China, and critiques the US approach toward China in the maritime domain in order to highlight potential avenues of foreign policy action that may enable the two countries to mitigate the risk of conflict. This book will be of much interest to students of naval history, maritime security, US foreign policy, and international relations.

Landscape Protection in International Law
Landscape Protection in International Law

Author: Amy Strecker

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-08-23

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0192560719

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Once the exclusive prerogative of domaine réservé, landscape has gained increasing importance in international law in recent years. Since the introduction of cultural landscapes within the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, and particularly since the adoption of the European Landscape Convention (ELC), emphasis has shifted beyond a scenic, preservationist approach towards a more dynamic, human-centred one. The focus is not only on outstanding landscapes, but also on the everyday and degraded landscapes where most people live and work. Landscape is land shaped by people, after all, and its protection, management and planning have a number of implications for democracy, human rights and spatial justice. Despite these links, however, there has been little legal scholarship on the topic. How does international law, which deals for the most part with universality, deal with something so region-specific and particular as landscape? What is the legal conception of landscape and what are the various roles played by international law in its protection? Amy Strecker assesses the institutional framework for landscape protection, analyses the interplay between landscape and human rights, and links the etymology and theory of landscape with its articulation in law.