Souveraineté/démocratie/Etat

This paper offers an historian’s view into one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of law and maritime navigation. If the first wave of European colonial expansion had seen the arrival of the Iberian powers in Asia in the 15th and 16th centuries, the second phase of expansion during the late 16th and early 17th centuries by their northern European competitors unleashed a violent struggle for market access to emporia and production centres via the high seas. Intellectually, this struggle took the form of a debate about the legal status of the seas and the ability of sovereigns to claim dominium over them. But important questions remain: Should all maritime spaces be treated legally the same? Just how unique or different were European positions and such central issues like the sovereignty of the sea? In drawing comparisons with maritime Southeast Asia during the late 16th and early 17th centuries, that is means contemporaneous with the apex of the debates in Europe, this essay will argue that far from being worlds apart, prevailing customs and basic attitudes were astonishingly similar.

El presente artículo tiene por objeto hacer un examen preliminar de un manuscrito, hasta la fecha desconocido e inédito, del gran humanista y abogado internacional holandés Hugo Grocio. En dicho manuscrito, Grocio se ocupa, esencialmente, de la formación de una sociedad civil basada en un arreglo contractual, y a su vez, examina los derechos y las obligaciones que emanan de ese pacto o contrato voluntario.

The present paper explores the shifting roles and understandings of the Singapore Straits from the latter Middle Ages until the opening decades of the eighteenth century. In pursuing this task, I will develop a set of basic questions that historicize and problematize the roles, functions and understandings of the Straits across the centuries, and also tease out historical and historiographical paradigms shaping and underpinning the understanding of the region’s past. In pursuing this programme I will make use of a broad range of sources including chronicles and histories, letters and treaties, navigational instructions and travel literature, as well as (European) cartography of the 16th to 18th centuries. In order to gain deeper appreciation of the multi-faceted roles and understandings of the Singapore Straits across the longue durée, I  not only adduce and evaluate materials of European colonial origin, but importantly also heed special attention to sources of Asian origin in general, and specifically to materials that have originally been written in Arabic, Malay, Chinese and have been made accessible to the wider reading public in various contemporary translations. The modes of enquiry and the insights brought to paper here differ both in terms of scope and objectives from my earlier findings expounded in The Singapore and Melaka Straits published in 2010.

This paper examines Hugo Grotius’ ideas on the freedom of navigation on the high seas and Southeast Asian maritime practices in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In the past Charles H. Alexandrowicz (and closely following him Ram Prakash Anand) had argued that Grotius’ position – which was admittedly unusual in a European legal context at that point in time – had been influenced by early Dutch experiences in the island world of Southeast Asia. Recent Grotius research, however, has debunked these positions as both speculative and false. At the time of writing or revising his treatise Mare Liberum for the press (ca.1604-9), Grotius possessed only a very shallow knowledge of Asian maritime practices. This paper aims to take the analysis a crucial step further: Did the polities of insular Southeast Asia really pursue a policy of Mare Liberum as has been generally surmised by some legal historians and IR theorists? What concepts of maritime space prevailed, and how do they compare with Grotius and some of his contemporaries? A careful scrutiny and comparison of key concepts will yield some unexpected results.

"In 1603, Dutch Admiral Jacob van Heemskerk plundered a Portuguese merchantman, the Santa Catarina, travelling from Macao to Melaka. The sale of the cargo at a public auction made traders across Northern Europe aware of the riches to be reaped from Asian trade. However, the episode raised legal questions and the United Dutch East India Company (VOC) commissioned the young Hugo Grotius to defend Heemskerk's actions. Grotius produced two classic legal texts, The Law of Price and Booty and its spin-off, The Free Sea, among the greatest works in the history of international legal and political thought. His observations dealt with free trade in the East Indies, the Dutch Republic's military conflict with the Portuguese and Spanish in Asia, and the legal and moral grounds for attacking and plundering Portuguese and Spanish mercantile shipping.

This book considers the background to the treaties then content and significances, and what Grotius actually knew about Southeast Asian politics and Portuguese institutions of trade and diplomacy when he wrote them.

Grotius' work on the freedom of the sea was a cornerstone in his enduring reputation as one of the founders of modern international law. The present book provides a valuable resource for historians of Southeast Asia and for students of international relations, political theory, maritime history and public law.
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"The Theses LVI belong to a series of hitherto unpublished early manuscripts of the Dutch humanist and jurisconsult Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) that were acquired by the University of Leiden in 1864. It is not certain when the Theses were written, but preliminary research on the physical manuscript and the sources cited indicate two possible windows. The first is around 1602-1605, that is roughly at a time when Grotius was also working on his Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty (De Iure Praedae Commentarius). The second dating places the genesis of the manuscrbipt around 1613-1615.
In the context of Grotius’ writings, the Theses LVI assume an important position for several reasons: They raise questions about state formation, the duty of citizens to the state and the right of political resistance in far greater detail than in any other work of the celebrated Dutch humanist. The Theses LVI also feature important reading notes that yield priceless insights into the sources that Grotius directly consulted and their influence on his ideas. The manuscript grants modern scholars a unique glimpse into the working mind of its author. Evidence points not only to the ferocious haste with which Grotius wrote his works, but also the occasional sloppiness of his reading and research habits.""""