Mare Tutum: Thucydides, King Minos, and the Concept of the ‘Secure Sea’ in Seventeenth-Century Maritime Law
In: GrotianaSearch for other papers by Alexander Batson in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
This article examines a crucial argument in seventeenth-century maritime law: the concept of mare tutum, or ‘the secure sea’. According to this idea, the sea was characterized by chaotic piracy and required a strong central governing authority to impose order. Once the sea was secure, the ruler would reap the rewards of commerce and tariff revenues. Mare tutum espoused the idea of sea sovereignty for the goal of economic growth. Crucial to this idea was Thucydides’ account of the Cretan King Minos. The jurists Nicolaes Bonaert, Pietro Battista Borghi, and Giovanni Palazzi used the model of Minos’ Aegean thalassocracy to argue for Portuguese, Genoese, and Venetian control of the seas. The article illuminates the hitherto unknown importance of Thucydides in maritime law. It also complicates the traditional mare liberum/mare clausum framework by positing a third option which focused on control of the seas as a means to fostering trade and economic growth.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Bonaert, Nicolaes. ‘Textus Inediti: Minos seu mare tutum’, edited by Primitivo Mariño. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu 61 (1992), 309–338.
-
Borghi, Pietro Battista. De dominio Serenissimae Genuensis Reipublicae in Mari Ligustico. Rome: Dominicus Marcianus, 1641.
-
Dee, John. General and Rare Memorials Pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation. London: John Daye, 1577.
-
Graswinckel, Dirck. Maris liberi vindiciae adversus Petrum Baptistam Burgum Ligustici maritimi dominii assertorem. The Hague: Adrian Vlac, 1652.
-
Grotius, Hugo. Mare liberum sive de iure quod Batavis competit ad Indicana commercia dissertatio. Leiden: Elzevier, 1609.
-
Grotius, Hugo. De iure belli ac pacis libri tres. Paris: Nicolaus Buon, 1625.
-
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: Revised Student Edition, ed. by Richard Tuck. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
-
Hobbes, Thomas. The Peloponnesian War. Thucydides: The Complete Hobbes Translation. With notes and a new introduction by David Grene. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989.
-
Palazzi, Giovanni. De dominio maris libri duo Serenissimae Venetae Reipublicae dicati. Venice: Combi et La Nou, 1663.
-
Plato, Charmides. Alcibiadesi and ii. Hipparchus. The Lovers. Theages. Minos. Epinomis. Translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Loeb Classical Library 201. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927.
-
Ryves, Thomas. Historia navalis antiqua libri quatuor. London: Robert Barker, 1633.
-
Scheffer, Johannes. De militia navali veterum libri quatuor. Uppsala: Johannes Janssonius, 1654.
-
Selden, John. Mare clausum, seu de dominio maris libri duo. London: William Stansby for Richard Meighen, 1636.
-
Selden, John. ‘Vindiciae secundum integritatem existimationis suae per convitium de scriptioni maris clausi’, In Johannis Seldeni opera omnia, tam edita quam inedita. London: T. Wood, 1726. ii.2, cols. 1415–38.
-
Sigmund von Kronegk, Karl. Minos maris dominus. Strassburg: Bernegger, 1656.
-
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War. 4 volumes. Translated by C.F. Smith. Loeb Classical Library 108, 109, 110, 169. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919–23.
-
Vázquez de Menchaca, Fernando. Controversiarium illustrium aliarumque usu frequentium libri tres. Venice: Franciscus Rampazetus, 1564.
-
Alexandrowicz, C. H. An Introduction to the History of the Law of Nations in the East Indies (16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.
-
Anand, Ram Prakash. Origin and Development of the Law of the Sea. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982.
-
Benton, Lauren. A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
-
Benton, Lauren, and Benjamin Straumann, ‘Acquiring Empire by Law: From Roman Doctrine to Early Modern European Practice’, Law and History Review 28.1 (2010), 1–38.
-
Boxer, Charles. The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415–1825. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1969.
-
Calafat, Guillaume. Une mer jalousée: Contribution à l’histoire de la souveraineté (Méditerranée, XVIIe siècle). Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2019.
-
Cattelan, Stefano. ‘The defence of Venetian dominion over the Adriatic Sea: Situating Paolo Sarpi c. 1600–1625’, Comparative Legal History 9.2 (2021), 177–207.
-
Evrigenis, Ioannis D. Images of Anarchy: The Rhetoric and Science in Hobbes’s State of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
-
Haggenmacher, Peter. Grotius et la doctrine de la guerre juste. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983.
-
Hoekstra, Kinch. ‘Thucydides and the Bellicose Beginnings of Modern Political Theory’, In Thucydides in the Modern World: Reception, Reinterpretation and Influence from the Renaissance to the Present, ed. by Katherine Harloe and Neville Morley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 25–54.
-
Hoekstra, Kinch. ‘Hobbes’ Thucydides’, in The Oxford Handbook of Hobbes, ed. by Al P. Martinich and Kinch Hoekstra. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 547–74.
-
Hoekstra, Kinch. ‘Thucydides in the Renaissance and Reformation’, in The Cambridge Companion to Thucydides, ed. by Polly Low. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023, pp. 265–81.
-
Iurarlo, Francesca. The Invention of Custom: Natural Law and the Law of Nations, ca. 1550–1750. Leiden: Brill, 2022.
-
Karr, Susan Longfield. Jus Gentium in Humanist Jurisprudence: On Justice and Right. Leiden: Brill, 2022.
-
Kirk, Thomas Allison. Genoa and the Sea: Policy and Power in an Early Modern Maritime Republic, 1559–1684. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.
-
Klosko, George, and Daryl Rice, ‘Thucydides and Hobbes’s State of Nature’, History of Political Thought 6.3 (1985), 405–9.
-
Lane, Frederic C. Venice: A Maritime Republic. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.
-
Lockhart, Paul Douglas. Sweden in the Seventeenth Century. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004.
-
Pade, Marianne. ‘Thucydides’ Renaissance Readers’, in Brill’s Companion to Thucydides, ed. by Antonis Tsakmakis and Antonios Rengakos. Brill’s Companions to Classical Studies. Leiden: Brill, 2006, pp. 779–810.
-
Pade, Marianne. ‘Thucydides’, in Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum: Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries: Annotated Lists and Guides, vol. viii, ed. by Virginia Brown. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003. vol. viii, pp. 103–81.
-
Maloni, Ruby. ‘Control of the Seas: The Historical Exegesis of the Portuguese “Cartaz”’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 72.1 (2011), 476–84.
-
Nieves San Emeterio Martín, Maria. ‘El debate sobre el dominio de los mares en el imperio español durante los siglos xvi y xvii’, Iberian Journal of the History of Economic Thought 7.2 (2020), 133–42.
-
Perruso, Richard. ‘The Development of the Doctrine of Res Communes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe’. Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis 70 (202), 69–94.
-
Ribarević, Luka. ‘Thomas Hobbes’s State of Nature: A View from Thucydides’ Peloponnesus’, Global Intellectual History 8.5 (2023), pp. 584–608.
-
Roberts, Michael. The Swedish Imperial Experience, 1560–1718. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
-
Rosenberg, Gunther E. ‘Venice and the Uskoks of Senj: 1537–1618’, The Journal of Modern History 33.2 (1961), 148–56.
-
Scott, Jonathan. ‘Maritime Orientalism, or the Political Theory of Water’, History of Political Thought 35.1 (2014), 70–90.
-
Somos, Mark. ‘Selden’s Mare Clausum: The Secularization of International Law and the Rise of Soft Imperialism’, Journal of the History of International Law 14.2 (2012), 287–330.
-
Straumann, Benjamin. ‘”Ancient Caesarian Lawyers” in a State of Nature: Roman Tradition and Natural Rights in Hugo Grotius’ “De iure praedae’’’, Political Theory 34.3 (June 2006), 328–50.
-
Straumann, Benjamin. ‘Is Modern Liberty Ancient? Roman Remedies and Natural Rights in Hugo Grotius’ Early Works on Natural Law’, Law and History Review 27.1 (Spring 2009): 55–85.
-
Straumann, Benjamin. Roman Law in the State of Nature: The Classical Foundations of Hugo Grotius’ Natural Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
-
Straumann, Benjamin. ‘Thucydides, Hobbes, and the Melian Dialogue’, in The State of Nature: Histories of an Idea, ed. by Mark Somos and Anne Peters. Leiden: Brill, 2022, pp. 6–27.
-
Tuck, Richard. The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.
-
van Ittersum, Martine. Profit and Principle: Hugo Grotius, Natural Rights Theories and the Rise of Dutch Power in the East Indies, 1595–1615. Leiden: Brill, 2006.
-
van Ittersum, Martine. ‘Debating the Free Sea in London, Paris, the Hague, and Venice: The publication of John Selden’s Mare Clausum (1635) and its diplomatic repercussions in Western Europe’, History of European Ideas 47.8 (2021), 1193–1210.
-
Ziskind, Jonathan. ‘International Law and Ancient Sources: Grotius and Selden’. The Review of Politics 35.4 (1973), 537–59.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 273 | 273 | 19 |
| Full Text Views | 13 | 13 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 136 | 136 | 14 |
Mare Tutum: Thucydides, King Minos, and the Concept of the ‘Secure Sea’ in Seventeenth-Century Maritime Law
In: GrotianaSearch for other papers by Alexander Batson in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This article examines a crucial argument in seventeenth-century maritime law: the concept of mare tutum, or ‘the secure sea’. According to this idea, the sea was characterized by chaotic piracy and required a strong central governing authority to impose order. Once the sea was secure, the ruler would reap the rewards of commerce and tariff revenues. Mare tutum espoused the idea of sea sovereignty for the goal of economic growth. Crucial to this idea was Thucydides’ account of the Cretan King Minos. The jurists Nicolaes Bonaert, Pietro Battista Borghi, and Giovanni Palazzi used the model of Minos’ Aegean thalassocracy to argue for Portuguese, Genoese, and Venetian control of the seas. The article illuminates the hitherto unknown importance of Thucydides in maritime law. It also complicates the traditional mare liberum/mare clausum framework by positing a third option which focused on control of the seas as a means to fostering trade and economic growth.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 273 | 273 | 19 |
| Full Text Views | 13 | 13 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 136 | 136 | 14 |