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Front Page  Groups & Collections The Freedom of the Seas
Debate: The Freedom of the SeasThe Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius wrote a defence of the freedom of the seas,
Mare Liberum, in 1609. According to the editor of the Liberty fund
edition of this work:
By publishing Mare Liberum, he was
displaying the literary, rhetorical, and philosophical talents that had won
him his burgeoning fame and respect, and he was also intervening in two
political debates of pivotal significance for his own country. The first was
the relationship between the United Provinces and the Spanish monarchy,
from which the Dutch had broken away in 1581; the second was the Dutch
right to commercial penetration in Southeast Asia. Although the arena of
dispute was local, the implications of Mare Liberum’s arguments
were global. The book was taken by the English and the Scots as an assault
on their fishing rights in the North Sea (see Welwod’s critique) and by
the Spanish as an attack on the foundations of their overseas empire. It
had implications no less for coastal waters than it did for the high seas,
for theWest Indies as much as for the East Indies, and for intra-European
disputes as well as for relations between the European powers and extra-European
peoples.
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