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2 - Territory and Jurisdiction in Renaissance Europe

from Part I - International Law in Renaissance Europe (1492–1660)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2025

Randall Lesaffer
Affiliation:
KU Leuven and Tilburg University
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Summary

This chapter describes territorial conflicts among lords, parishes, cities and towns, and how they contributed to emerging notions of the territoriality of states. It surveys debates regarding both the expansion to new territories and the conservation of existing territories and considers how these debates operated both in Europe and in European overseas colonies. It analyses the writing of jurists as well as a plethora of practices that contemporaries pursued, which despite their obvious local reiterations, were mostly pan-European. Among other things, it covers the question of just war, taking possession of not yet occupied land, discovery, prescription, conservation of the status quo and the role of both conflicts and agreements, including agreements with indigenous peoples, natural law, the law of nations and of relations between territory and jurisdiction. To explain developments during the Renaissance, it observes a much longer time span that began in the Middle Ages and allowed for both slow and revolutionary transformations. It shows that developments in Europe were important, but as vital in both encouraging and empowering change was colonialism, which affected many peoples and territories across the world but also modified Europe in ways we have not yet completely understood.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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References

Further Reading

Andrade, Amélia Aguiar, A construção medieval do território (Lisbon: Livros Horizonte 2001).Google Scholar
Anghie, Antony, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005).Google Scholar
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Canning, Joseph, The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corey, David D., and Charles, J. Daryl, The Just War Tradition. An Introduction (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books 2012).Google Scholar
Fitzmaurice, Andrew, Sovereignty, Property and Empire, 1500–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2014).Google Scholar
Grossi, Paolo, Il dominio e le cose. Percezioni medievali e moderne dei diritti reali (Milan: Giuffrè 1992).Google Scholar
Haggenmacher, Peter, Grotius et la doctrine de la guerre juste (Paris: Presses universitaires de France 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herzog, Tamar, ‘Colonial law and “native customs”: indigenous land rights in colonial Spanish America’, The Americas, 63 (2013) 303–21.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
Herzog, Tamar, A Short History of European Law. The Last Two and a Half Millennia (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press 2018).Google Scholar
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Nuzzo, Luigi, Il linguaggio giuridico della conquista. Strategie di controllo nelle indie spagnole (Naples: Jovene 2004).Google Scholar
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Volante, Rafaelle, ‘Fatto normative e interpretatio iuris. La definizione del possesso nel diritto comune’ in Sbriccoli, Mario et al. (eds.), Ordo Iuris. Storia e forme dell’esperienza giuridica (Milan: Giuffrè 2003) 339.Google Scholar
von der Heydte, Friedrich August Freiherr, ‘Discovery, symbolic annexation and virtual effectiveness in international law’, American Journal of International Law, 29 (1935) 448–71.Google Scholar

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