Sovereignty Property and Empire 1500-2000

This book analyses the laws that shaped modern European empires from medieval times to the twentieth century. Its geographical scope is global including the Americas Europe Africa Asia Australia and the Poles. Andrew Fitzmaurice focuses upon the use of the law of occupation to justify and critique the appropriation of territory. He examines both discussions of occupation by theologians philosophers and jurists as well as its application by colonial publicists and settlers themselves. Beginning with the medieval revival of Roman law this study reveals the evolution of arguments concerning the right to occupy through the School of Salamanca the foundation of American colonies seventeenth-century natural law theories Enlightenment philosophers eighteenth-century American colonies and the new American republic writings of nineteenth-century jurists debates over the carve up of Africa twentieth-century discussions of the status of Polar territories and the period of decolonisation.