INTRODUCTION 



embraced in the term besides the question of naval ascendency. 

 There were jurisdictions of various kinds and for various pur- 

 poses. There was the important subject of the fisheries in 

 the waters adjacent to the coasts, or, it might be, in distant 

 regions. There was the still more important question of the 

 freedom or restriction of commerce and navigation from one 

 European country to another, or to the remote countries in the 

 east or west which had been opened up to commercial enter- 

 prise by the discoveries of the early navigators. There was, 

 moreover, another subject which was specially characteristic 

 of the English pretensions to the dominion of the seas, and 

 which gave rise to more trouble than all the others combined, 



o 



and that was the demand that foreign vessels on meeting with 

 a ship of the king's should lower their top-sails and strike their 

 flag as a token and acknowledgment of that dominion. 



Although according to the Roman law the sea was common 

 and free to all, in the middle ages many seas had become more 

 or less effectively appropriated, and Civilian writers began to 

 assign to maritime states, as a principle of law, a certain juris- 

 diction in the waters adjacent to their coasts. The distance 

 to which such jurisdiction was allowed by those writers was 

 variously stated. Very commonly it extended to sixty or one 

 hundred miles from the land, and thus included all the border- 

 ing sea within which navigation was practically confined. 

 Sometimes the principle governing the ownership of rivers was 

 transferred in theory to the sea, the possession of the opposite 

 shores by the same state being held to entitle that state to the 

 sovereignty over the intervening water ; or, if it possessed 

 only one shore, to the same right as far as the mid-line. In 

 most cases, however, the appropriation of the sea was effected 

 by force and legalised afterwards, if legalised at all, and 

 the disputes on the subject between different nations not 

 infrequently led to sanguinary wars. 



The most notable instances are to be found among the early 

 Italian Republics. Long before the end of the thirteenth 

 century Venice, eminent for her commerce, wealth, and maritime 

 power, assumed the sovereignty over the whole of the Adriatic, 

 though she was not in possession of both the shores, and after 

 repeated appeals to the sword she was able to enforce the right 

 to levy tribute on the ships of other peoples which navigated 



