International Conference:
Contested
Seas: War, Commerce, and the Making of the Law of the Sea (c. 1400–1800)
19-20 November 2026, Ostend, Belgium
Vrije Universiteit
Brussel (VUB), Campus Ostend / Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ)
Conveners: Stefano Cattelan & Frederik Dhondt, Vrije Universiteit Brussel –
Faculty of Law and Criminology, Research Group CORE
Keynote
speakers: Surabhi Ranganathan (Lauterpacht Centre, University
of Cambridge); Indravati Félicité (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)
Concept
and Rationale: The early modern law of the sea did not emerge as a coherent or
pacified body of rules. Rather, it took shape as a fragmented and deeply
contested legal regime. It was forged through recurrent warfare, commercial
rivalry, and persistent struggles over jurisdiction and enforcement at sea. The
pelagic arena was characterised by overlapping jurisdictions, uneven
enforcement, and profound asymmetries of power (Benton, 2010). The
freedom of the seas (‘Mare Liberum’) did not operate as a stable
peacetime principle. It was repeatedly restricted, negotiated, and redefined in
moments of conflict, particularly through disputes concerning maritime
jurisdiction, economic warfare, neutral navigation, and prize-taking.
Hence,
several methodological questions arise. Can we chart the deeper structures and
long-term evolutions of the law of the sea and, at the same time, remain
historically grounded and relevant to contemporary debates?
Recent
scholarship has challenged the idea that the law of the sea gradually restrained
violence at sea. Instead, norms were forged, tested, and transformed
through concrete conflicts over sovereignty, jurisdiction, and neutral
navigation (e.g. Steinberg, 2001; Benton, 2010; Schnakenbourg, 2015; Calafat,
2019; Cattelan, 2025). This perspective invites a rethinking of the law of the
sea not as a dependent variable of early modern conflict, but as one of its crucial
products. The present conference builds on this emerging insight and
seeks to explore its broader implications across different regions, actors, and
legal contexts.
This
conference invites contributions that approach the law of the sea as a
historically produced normative regime, examined as (1) a body of legal
argument, a set of institutional (2) practices, and a (3) field
of political struggle. It seeks to foster dialogue across legal
history, international law and the histories of ideas, diplomacy, warfare, and
empire, bringing together scholars attentive to different sources, actors
and objects (doctrine, archives, institutions, legal reasoning,
institutional practice, and material interests). The conference situates the
law of the sea within broader processes of state formation, imperial
competition, and global connectivity, including its interaction with commercial
and maritime legal practices (Félicité, 2024).
This
conference takes a broad analytical perspective, to seal a series of
three encounters organised under the aegis of FWO Junior Fundamental Research
Project G016122N. While earlier meetings in this series focused primarily on
neutrality as a legal status, diplomatic strategy, and social practice —particularly
from the perspective of small and medium powers— the present symposium shifts
the analytical focus: recurrent conflicts over neutrality, belligerent rights,
maritime jurisdiction, and enforcement mechanisms did not merely test existing
norms. These instances were crucial to the historical formation of the law of
the sea as a contested legal regime. In this sense, neutrality is approached as
a formative force in the making of the law of the sea across judicial,
diplomatic, and commercial arenas.
The
conference aims to offer a synthetic reinterpretation of the
relationship between mare liberum and mare clausum, peace and
war, neutrality and coercion, situating the early modern law of the sea within
the longer history of international law without assuming linear trajectories or
teleological outcomes. It also invites reflection on the enduring legacies of
early modern maritime practices for later codification efforts and contemporary
debates on ocean governance in an increasingly polycentric world (Mawani, 2023;
Ranganathan, 2016, 2020).
Finally,
the conference welcomes contributions addressing different maritime regions
and circuits, including —but not limited to— the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and
Indian Ocean worlds, as well as interactions between different legal orders and
actors (Anand, 1983; Khalilieh, 2019; Subrahmanyam, 2024; Po, 2018). We particularly
welcome contributions on cross-cultural legal encounters and concrete sites
of norm production, such as courts, diplomatic practices, commercial
litigation, port regulations, and contractual arrangements.
Key Questions
The
conference invites contributions addressing one or more of the following
questions:
- What kind of
legal regime was the early modern law of the sea?
How can it be understood as a historically contingent and contested normative order rather than a coherent or stabilised body of rules? - How did
warfare shape the law of the sea?
In what ways did recurring conflicts over maritime jurisdiction, belligerent rights, neutrality, blockade, contraband, and prize-taking contribute to the production and transformation of legal norms at sea? - How was the
law of the sea articulated, applied, and contested in daily practice?
What roles did courts, diplomatic channels, port authorities, consular institutions, and commercial actors play in the everyday functioning of this legal regime? - How did
neutrality operate as a formative force within the law of the sea?
How were legal boundaries between peace and war at sea shaped by disputes and agreements involving neutral navigation? - How did individuals and non-state
actors exercise legal agency at sea?
The mobilisation of multiple normative orders —public, commercial, and customary by merchants, shipmasters, insurers, chartered companies, or private entrepreneurs — to pursue commercial, political, or strategic objectives is central here. - How did
different connected spaces and regions shape a distinct legal practice?
How did practices take shape across and between different maritime regions and circuits, including interactions between European and extra-European legal orders? - What are the
longer-term implications of early modern practices of the law of the sea?
How did early modern solutions and conflicts inform later codification efforts and continue to resonate in contemporary debates on ocean governance?
Thematic Areas (Indicative)
The
following thematic areas, which constitute the thematic translation of the
questions highlighted above, articulate different dimensions of the early
modern law of the sea as a contested legal regime produced through conflict,
commerce, and legal practice. They are intended to be read as analytically
connected rather than as parallel or autonomous agendas. They are indicative
rather than exhaustive.
1. The sea as a legal and spatial order
Maritime
jurisdiction; territorial waters; ports, straits, and littoral zones;
sovereignty and access; legal pluralism at sea; competing claims to control,
passage, and enforcement.
2. War, commerce, and neutrality in the law of the sea
Naval warfare
and economic conflict; blockade, contraband, and continuous voyage;
prize-taking and adjudication; neutrality as legal status, diplomatic strategy,
and practical resource; coercion, enforcement, and asymmetries between
belligerents and neutrals.
3. Institutions and practices producing the law of the sea
Courts
(including admiralty and prize courts); diplomatic correspondence; consular
jurisdictions; port authorities and regulatory regimes; chartered companies;
litigation, arbitration, and everyday legal practice. Contributions grounded in
specific sources or sites of norm production are particularly welcome.
4. Agency and normative pluralism within the law of the sea
The role of
individuals and non-state actors —such as merchants, shipmasters, insurers,
private entrepreneurs, and colonial intermediaries— in mobilising a plurality
of normative orders, including the law of nations, domestic legislation,
commercial and maritime law, urban statutes, customary norms, and private
contracts.
5. The law of the sea across regions, empires, and legal
encounters
Comparative
and transregional perspectives; interactions between European and
extra-European legal orders; cross-cultural legal encounters; circulation,
translation, and contestation of norms governing maritime space in different
oceanic worlds.
6. From early modern practice to modern/contemporary ocean
governance
Long-term
continuities and ruptures in the law of the sea; armed neutrality and
collective enforcement; early modern legacies in later codification efforts and
contemporary debates on ocean governance.
Disciplinary
Scope: The
conference welcomes contributions from legal history, the history of
international law, maritime and naval history, diplomatic and political
history, economic history, and international law scholarship with a historical
or theoretical orientation. Interdisciplinary, critical, and transregional
approaches are particularly encouraged. Early-career researchers are warmly
invited to submit proposals.
Format: The conference
is conceived as a focused, discussion-oriented event. Draft papers will be
circulated in advance to facilitate in-depth exchange. Presentations will be
kept at 20 minutes for each speaker in order to prioritise collective
discussion and comparative discussion.
Submission
Guidelines: please submit an abstract of no more than 350 words and a short
biographical note of up to 150 words to: stefano.cattelan@vub.be.
Submission deadline: 15 May 2026
Notification of acceptance: 1 June 2026
Draft papers (for pre-circulation among participants): 20 October 2026
Publication: Following the conference, selected contributions will be
submitted to a special issue in an international peer-reviewed journal
(preferably open access).
Practical
Information: The organisers aim to secure funding to cover organisational costs
and, where possible, to offer limited support for travel and accommodation,
particularly for early-career researchers and scholars without access to
dedicated research funds. Further practical information will be communicated to
accepted participants.
Indicative references:
Alimento,
Antonella (ed.), War, Trade and
Neutrality: Europe and the Mediterranean in the Seventeenth and Eighteen
Centuries (Milano, 2011).
Id.,
and Stapelbroek, Koen (eds.), The
Politics of Commercial Treaties in the Eighteenth Century (Cham, 2017).
Anand,
Ram P., Origin and Development of the Law of the Sea. History of International
Law Revisited (The Hague/Boston/London, 1983).
Benton,
Lauren and Perl-Rosenthal, Nathan (eds.), A World at Sea: Maritime Practices
and Global History (Philadelphia, 2020).
Benton,
Lauren, A Search for Sovereignty. Law and Geography in European Empires,
1400-1900 (Cambridge, 2010).
Calafat,
Guillaume, Une mer jalousée: contribution
à l’histoire de la souveraineté (Méditerranée, XVIIe siècle)
(Paris, 2019).
Cattelan, Stefano and Frederik
Dhondt (eds.), Small Power Neutrality and the Law of the Sea in the Long
Eighteenth Century (1650–1800). Law as
Argument in the Pelagic Arena (Leiden/Boston, 2025).
Cattelan,
Stefano and Louis Sicking. ‘The Coastal Seas in International Law:
Contextualising Grotius’s De iure belli ac pacis’, Grotiana, 46(1)
(2025), 43-65.
Cattelan,
Stefano, Mare Clausum: The Formation of the Law of the Sea in Pre-modern
State Practice and Legal Doctrine (c. 1350–1650) (Leiden/Boston,
2025).
Dhondt,
Frederik, ‘“Arrestez et pillez contre toute sorte de droit”: Trade and the War
of the Quadruple Alliance (1718-1720)’, Legatio:
The Journal for Renaissance and Early Modern Diplomatic Studies, 1 (2017), 98-130.
Id.,
‘Delenda est haec Carthago. The
Ostend Company as a Problem of European Great Power Politics (1722-1727)’, Belgisch
Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis/Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 93 (2015), 397-437.
Félicité,
Indravati, Le Saint-Empire face au monde. Contestations et redéfinitions de
l’impérialité (XVe-XIXe siècle) (Paris, 2024).
Ford,
John D., The Emergence of Privateering
(Leiden/Boston, 2023).
Harding,
Richard, Seapower and Naval Warfare,
1650–1830 (London, 2002).
Khalilieh,
Hassan S., Islamic Law of the Sea: Freedom of Navigation and Passage Rights
in Islamic Thought (Cambridge, 2019).
Mancke,
Elizabeth, ‘Early Modern Expansion and the Politicization of Oceanic Space’, Geographical
Review, 89(2), 225-36.
Mawani, Renisa, ‘The law of the sea’, in Peter D.
Burdon and James Martel (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Law and the
Anthropocene (London, 2023), 115-29.
Müller,
Leos, Neutrality in World History
(New York, 2019).
Neff,
Stephen C., The Rights and Duties of
Neutrals: A General History (Manchester, 2000).
Po,
Ronald C, The Blue Frontier: Maritime Vision and Power in the Qing
Empire (Cambridge, 2018).
Ranganathan,
Surabhi, ‘Decolonization and International Law: Putting the Ocean on the Map’, Journal
of the History of International Law, 23(1) (2020), 161-83.
Id.,
‘Global Commons’, European Journal of International Law, 27(3) (2016),
693-717.
Schnakenbourg,
Éric, Entre la guerre et la paix:
Neutralité et relations internationales, XVIIe–XVIIIe
Siècles (Rennes, 2013).
Sicking,
Louis, ‘The Pirate and the Admiral: Europeanisation and Globalisation of
Maritime Conflict Management’, Journal of the History of International Law,
20(4) (2018), 429-70.
Steinberg,
Philip E., The Social Construction of the
Ocean (Cambridge, 2001).
Strootman,
Rolf, van den Eijnde, Floris, and van Wijk, Roy (eds.), Empires of the Sea.
Maritime Power Networks in World History (Leiden, 2019).
Subrahmanyam,
Sanjay, Across the Green Sea: Histories from the Western Indian Ocean,
1440–1640 (Austin, 2024).
Wani,
Kentaro, Neutrality in International Law. From the Sixteenth Century to 1945
(London/New York, 2017).
