CHAPTER I. 



THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF THE TERRITORIAL SEA. 



FROM what has been said in previous chapters, it is apparent 

 that the extensive claims which were formerly made to the 

 dominion of the English or British seas were practically 

 abandoned in the eighteenth century, and the pretensions of 

 other states to a similar and more effective dominion in par- 

 ticular seas long ago shared the same fate. It is now settled 

 as indisputable, both by the usage of nations and the principles 

 of international law, that the open ocean cannot be appro- 

 priated by any one Power. But it is also as firmly established 

 that all states possess sovereign rights in those parts of the 

 sea which wash their shores, although there is not, and has 

 never been, universal agreement as to the precise nature of 

 those rights, or as to the extent of the sea that may be thus 

 appropriated. While the general movement of opinion and 

 practice in modern times has thus been from the mare clausum 

 to the mare liberum from the sea held to be appropriated 

 by particular nations to the sea under no sovereignty, but free 

 and open to all for all purposes, there has been another move- 

 ment in the opposite direction, by which the exclusive rights 

 of maritime states in the waters immediately adjoining their 

 coasts have come to be more clearly recognised and definitely 

 incorporated in international law. To this extent all maritime 

 countries now possess a sovereignty of the sea. 



It is desirable to trace the evolution of this limited 

 sovereignty over what is now known as the territorial waters 

 or territorial sea (also named the neighbouring, proximal, ad- 

 jacent, or littoral sea mare proximum, mare vicinum, mer 

 territorial, ndchstangrenzendes Meer), and to consider in 



