What is it about?
In this book review, I discuss the excellent research done by the French historian Guillaume Calafat on the political and legal implications of maritime conflict and warfare in the Mediterranean in the early modern period. Calafat argues convincingly that long-forgotten conflicts involving Venice, Genoa and other Mediterranean powers resulted in a substantial number of legal opinions and policy papers --much of them languishing in archives-- which either defended or contested the extension of territorial sovereignty over stretches of sea adjoining the land.
Featured Image
Photo by Massimo Adami on Unsplash
Why is it important?
As shown by Calafat, jurists employed by Venice, Genoa and other Mediterranean powers in the early modern period produced a large body of work to justify and regulate maritime conflict and warfare. Alberico Gentili and John Selden --to name just a few-- drew extensively on this body of work to write such classics of international law as De Jure Belli/On the Law of War and Mare Clausum/The Closed Sea, respectively.
Perspectives
The important work done by French historians on the history of international law deserves a wide audience in the English-speaking world. Calafat's research findings also remind us that the Mediterranean has a long history of maritime conflict and warfare, which served to inform both the theory and practice of Western imperialism and colonialism in other parts of the world.
Martine Van Ittersum
University of Dundee
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Guillaume Calafat, Une mer jalousée: Contribution à l’histoire de la souveraineté (Méditerranée, XVIIe siècle), Journal of Early American History, April 2022, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/18770703-12010011.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
