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13 - Territory and Jurisdiction in Old Regime Europe

from Part II - International Law in Old Regime Europe (1660–1775)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2025

Randall Lesaffer
Affiliation:
KU Leuven and Tilburg University
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Summary

This chapter is a survey of the legal languages used to govern territory, sovereignty and the right of a ruler within a polity. Debates were heavily dominated by feudal and private law-concepts. Sovereigns maintained the diversity of privileges in the territories ruled in the setting of a composite monarchy. Claims and titles could or could not entail consequences for sovereignty. Reservations and exceptions to full internal sovereignty were not uncommon. Succession quarrels (often causes of war), could be solved by treaty, often in conflict with domestic constitutional rules and principles. Mixed polities (Poland-Lithuania, Holy Roman Empire) offered a broad range of argumentative topoi to either confirm or combat overlordship. Internal German questions could quickly escalate to the field of the law of nations through the game of alliances and guarantees. Although republican forms of monarchy and republican oligarchies were on the decline in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, their legal agency was not contested. In extra-European dominions of European sovereigns, the chain of reasoning was significantly lighter, as feudal arguments rarely came into play. Conversely, the agency of subaltern actors in establishing boundaries, or the treatment of native Americans as either allies or subjects provide original avenues of research.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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References

Further Reading

Aretin, Karl Othmar von, Das Alte Reich 1648–1806, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 1993–7).Google Scholar
Belmessous, Saliha (ed.), Empire by Treaty. Negotiating European Expansion, 1600–1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014).Google Scholar
Bély, Lucien, Hanotin, Guillaume and Poumarède, Géraud (eds.), La diplomatie-monde. Autour de la paix d’Utrecht 1713 (Paris: Pedone 2019).Google Scholar
Benton, Lauren, A Search for Sovereignty. Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010).Google Scholar
Duchhardt, Heinz, Balance of Power und Pentarchie (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh 1997).Google Scholar
Erbig, Jeffrey Allen, Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met. Border Making in Eighteenth-Century South America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 2020).Google Scholar
Frey, Linda, and Frey, Marsha (eds.), The Treaties of the War of the Spanish Succession. An Historical and Critical Dictionary (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 1995).Google Scholar
Greengrass, Mark (ed.), Conquest and Coalescence. The Shaping of the State in Early Modern Europe (New York: E. Arnold 1991).Google Scholar
Grewe, Wilhelm G., The Epochs of International Law (Berlin and New York: Walter De Gruyter 2000).Google Scholar
Herzog, Tamar, Frontiers of Possession. Spain and Portugal in Europe and the Americas (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press 2015).Google Scholar
Malettke, Klaus, Hegemonie – Multipolares System – Gleichgewicht (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schnettger, Matthias, ‘Das Alte Reich und Italien in der Frühen Neuzeit. Ein institutionsgeschichtlicher Überblick’, Quellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 79 (1999) 344420.Google Scholar
Steiger, Heinhard, ‘Rechtliche Strukturen der europäischen Staatenordnung 1648–1792’, Zeitschrift für ausländischen öffentlichen Recht und Völkerrecht, 59 (1999) 609–49.Google Scholar
Verzijl, Jan Hendrik Willem, International Law in Historical Perspective, vol. III (Leiden: Sijthof 1970).Google Scholar
Whaley, Joachim, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, vol. II (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2011).Google Scholar

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