Sovereignty, property and empire, 1500-2000 / Andrew Fitzmaurice.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fitzmaurice, Andrew, author.

Series:

Ideas in context ; 107.

Ideas in context ; 107

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

International law--History.

International law.

History.

Indigenous peoples--Legal status, laws, etc--History.

Indigenous peoples.

Colonization--History.

Colonization.

Sovereignty--History.

Sovereignty.

Conquest, Right of--History.

Conquest, Right of.

Indigenous peoples--Legal status, laws, etc.

Physical Description:

ix, 378 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Summary:

This book analyses the laws that shaped modern European empires from medieval times to the twentieth century. Its geographical scope is global, including the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and the Poles. Andrew Fitzmaurice focuses upon the use of the law of occupation to justify and critique the appropriation of territory. He examines both discussions of occupation by theologians, philosophers and jurists, as well as its application by colonial publicists and settlers themselves. Beginning with the medieval revival of Roman law, this study reveals the evolution of arguments concerning the right to occupy through the School of Salamanca, the foundation of American colonies, seventeenth-century natural law theories, Enlightenment philosophers, eighteenth-century American colonies and the new American republic, writings of nineteenth-century jurists, debates over the carve up of Africa, twentieth-century discussions of the status of Polar territories, and the period of decolonisation.

Contents:

Introduction

Occupation from Roman law to Salamanca

The Salamanca school in England

Occupation and convention

Theories of occupation in the eighteenth century

The Seven Years War, land speculation and the American Revolution

Occupation in the nineteenth century

Res nullius and sovereignty

Territorium nullius and Africa

Terra nullius and the polar regions

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781107076495

1107076498

OCLC:

882899380