Jurisdictional Accumulation

Abstract

The majority of European early modern empires - the Spanish, French, Dutch and English/British - are best characterised as developing practices of jurisdictional accumulation. These practices are distinguished by the three categories of extensions, transports, and transplants of authority, and this book is mostly concerned with various diplomatic and colonial agents which enabled the transports and transplants of their sovereign's authority. Through historical analyses of ambassadors and consuls in the Mediterranean based on primary and secondary material, and on the empires' Atlantic imperial expansions and conquests, the book makes two major analytical contributions. It firstly develops jurisdictional accumulation as a conceptual innovation, based, secondly, on an interdisciplinary mix of methodological angles. These intertwined contributions enable us to go beyond common binaries in both conventional and critical histories of international relations and international law through the use of a Political Marxist framework and its concept of social property relations.

Maritime temporalities and capitalist development

“…Once again, eminently geographical phenomena such as the impossibility of permanently populating the high seas, or the challenges associated to accessing and controlling unruly coastlines, have produced distinctive legal norms like 'the freedom of the seas' and unique practices of shared or devolved jurisdiction at, or close to the sea, which Lauren Benton (2010) has labelled 'legal pluralism' (see also Merry, 1988;Colás & Mabee, 2010;Mathew, 2016;Pal, 2021). As commercial capitalism engulfed regional economies across the world, latching on to ancestral seaborne trade routes, repurposing local maritime knowledge and technologies (Sheriff, 2010), or adopting and adapting existing forms of property rights or labour exploitation at different ports (Bishara, 2017), the nature of the world market was also modified.…”