Territorial Waters: The Origin of a Contradiction

At first glance, the concept of territorial waters must be a paradox. ‘Territory’, with its etymology rooted in terra, denotes ground, firm land, which contrasts sharply with the fluidity of ‘waters’. The term ‘territorial waters’ denotes the theoretical and, at times, practical imposition of political claims on spaces that seem ill-equipped to meet them, with the result of yielding, at best, a mixed metaphor (one only has to think of Xerxes' whipping of the sea). And yet, wars have been fought for the strategic or economic value of water territory, and even to this day there exists no universally accepted agreement on the precise extent and definition of ‘territorial waters’. The term belongs to the world of legal taxonomy, and its exact demarcation in early fifteenth-century England is vital for the development of the sea's perception in political thought and literature.

Following the Roman understanding of the sea as land, the proto- egalitarian concept of the natural freedom of the seas was first challenged as a legal notion by the Glossators working in the University of Bologna during the twelfth century.