Lines of Division, Lines of Connection: Stewardship in the World Ocean
Philip E. Steinberg
Geographical Review, Vol. 89, No. 2, Oceans Connect. (Apr., 1999), pp. 254-264.
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LINES OF DIVISION, LINES OF CONNECTION: STEWARDSHIP IN THE WORLD OCEAN PHILIP E. STEINBERG ABSTRACT. This article investigates the history of drawing lines across ocean space. Although drawing lines generally is perceived as an act of division-as exemplified by the line
drawn through the Atlantic Ocean by Pope Alexander VI in iq93-lines, like the ocean itself,
often signify connection or other, more complex social relationships. In an attempt to break
through commonly held perspectives on line drawing in marine governance, I suggest that
key events (and lines) of modern marine history are characterized by a common norm of
stewardship. I conclude by considering the flexibility of stewardship and by alerting the
reader to alternate norms that could be used to generate ocean-governance systems. Keywords: marine governance, marine history, ocean space, stewardship, Treaty of Tordesillas.
Wistorians of marine governance frequently assert that the modern history of social regulation in the world ocean may be read as one of alternating currents for and
against division and territorial enclosure (Colombos 1967; Gold 1981; O'Connell
1982;Anand 1983).On one hand, these scholars note, events and proclamations such
as Hugo Grotius's 1608 The Freedom of the Seas, the nineteenth-century "free-seas"
policy imposed under Pax Britannica, and the nonterritorial self-regulation practiced by the maritime-transport industry in the twentieth century represent attempts at constructing the ocean as a friction-free void wherein nascent colonial
empires and enterprising merchants could establish lines of connection with farflung terrestrial territories, production sites, and markets. On the other hand, as interaction with the ocean has intensified over time, the ocean itselfhas come to beperceived as a space of resources, whether the resource is that of connection or
something more material, such as fish or minerals. Because the modern system of
competitive capitalist production governedby multiple, sovereign states encourages
territorialization, or spatial enclosure, as a means of commodifying and guaranteeing rents from resources, the modern era has been characterized by a number of
proclamations and events that generally are perceived as drawing lines designed to
foster the enclosure, possession, and management of ocean space. Among the notable events were the 1493 Papal Bull, the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, John Selden's 1635
Of the Dominion; or, Ownership of the Sea, the Truman Proclamations of 1945, and
various provisions of the 1982U.N.Convention on the Law of the Sea, including both
its regime of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZS)
and its regime for management of the
International Seabed Area.
The contradictory tendencies in modern-era marine governance-both the tendency to enclose ocean space with lines of division and the tendency to construct it
as a friction-free surface characterized by lines of connection-may be viewed as
reflecting the ebb and flow of contradictory tendencies in the spatiality of capitalism
% DR. STEINBERG
is an assistant professor of geography at Florida State University, Tallahassee,
Florida 32306-2190.
The Geographical Review 89 (2): 254-264, April lggg
Copyright O 2000 by the American Geographical Society of New York
STEWARDSHIP I N THE WORLD OCEAN
255
(Steinberg igggb). In this article I focus less on the changes that have characterized
the modern-era regime than on its continuity, from the late fifteenth century
through the present. In particular, I assert that in the modern era the drawing of lines
in ocean space-whether lines of division or lines of connection-can be seen as attempts to steward the ocean as a space that, on one hand, is immune to territorial incorporation into individual states or the system of states but that, on the other hand,
is susceptible to social intervention in pursuit of specific goals.
To develop this point, I begin with a careful reading ofwhat is generally taken as a
particularly extreme act of line drawing in modern marine history, the 1493 Papal
Bull and the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. These documents affirm a norm of marine
stewardship that falls somewhere between the construction of the sea as a space
amenable to enclosure and its construction as a protected space of connection immune to social actors' exertions and desires. Next I assert that this norm of stewardship has been a constant feature of European marine governance, from the law of the
Roman Mediterranean through the most recent proposals for sustainable development in the face of marine pollution and declining global fish stocks. I conclude by
suggesting that scholars and practitioners who design ocean-governance schemes
recognize the flexibility inherent in the stewardship norm while acknowledging that
stewardship is but one possible norm available for guiding ocean governance. Lines
may be drawn-or erased-in order to promote a range of social alternatives in
global ocean space.
In the mid-fifteenth century, as Chinawas choosing not to pursue a maritime empire
(thereby making room for other states to capture the lucrative trans-Indian Ocean
trade routes), Spain and Portugal were emerging as the dominant European longdistance powers. The two Iberian states' competition for access to distant territories
led to concerns that division within the Christian world could result in Europe's
squandering this golden opportunity for extending its influence. Pope Alexander VI
intervened, issuing a bull in 1493 that granted to Spain all non-Christian lands lying
"west and south" of a north-south line drawn loo leagues west of the Azores and the
Cape Verde Islands. The bull was formalized and amended the following year by the
Treaty of Tordesillas,which granted to Spain all non-Christian lands west of a northsouth line drawn 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands and to Portugal all nonChristian lands east of that line.
The bull and the treaty frequently are characterized as dividing the oceans of the
world between Spain and Portugal. Grotius, for instance, in his 1608 rebuttal of Portuguese claims, wrote:
The Portuguese claim as their own the whole expanse of the sea which separates two
parts of the world so far distant the one from the other, that in all the preceding centuries neither one has so much as heard of the other. Indeed, ifwe take into account
the share of the Spaniards,whose claim is the same as that of the Portuguese,only a
little less than the whole ocean is found to be subject to two nations,while all the rest
'
256
THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
of the peoples in the world are restricted to the narrow bounds of the northern seas.
(Grotius 1916 [1608], 37-38)
More recently, Edgar Gold stated that "The waters of the world had been divided and
allocated to two nations by papal decree, at that time the highest form oflegal instrument" (1981,35).In fact, neither the bull nor the treaty makes such a grant. In the bull,
the pope clearly states that the purpose of the grant is for missionary activities:
We therefore are rightly led, and hold it as our duty, to grant you even of our own accord and in your favor those things whereby with effort each day more hearty you
maybe enabled for the honor of God himself and the spread of the Christian rule to
carry forward your holy and praiseworthy purpose so pleasing to immortal God.
We have indeed learned that you, who for a long time had intended to seek out and
discover certain islands and mainlands remote and unknown and not hitherto discovered by others, to the end that you might bring to the worship of our Redeemer
and the profession of the Catholic faith their residents and inhabitants.. .chose our
beloved son, Christopher Columbus. . . .
Moreover, as your aforesaid envoys are of opinion, these very peoples living in
the said islands and countries believe in one God, the Creator in heaven, and seem
sufficiently disposed to embrace the Catholic faith and be trained in good morals.
And it is hoped that, were they instructed, the name of the Savior, our Lord Jesus
Christ,would easily be introduced into the said countries and islands.. . .We command you in virtue of holy obedience that. . . you should appoint to the aforesaid
mainlands and islands worthy, God-fearing,learned, skilled,and experienced men,
in order to instruct the aforesaid inhabitants and residents in the Catholic faith and
train them in good morals. (Bull Inter Caetera 1986 114931)
In recognition of the Spanish Crown's evident commitment to spreading the
gospel, the bull grants to Spain "all islands and mainlands found and to be found,
discovered and to be discovered" in the specified region. The Treaty of Tordesillas
omits the reason for the granting of territory but contains similar language: "All
lands, both islands and mainlands, found and discovered already, or to be found and
discovered hereafter"on the respective sides of the north-south line were to become
the property of the respective states (Treaty of Tordesillas 1986 [1494]). In neither
document is mention made of granting any portion of the sea itself to either Spain or
Portugal. Because the purpose of the grant was to carry out missionary activities, a
grant of the uninhabitable seas would not have served the pope's interest.'
Turning to the powers granted to each state in ocean space, the bull makes no
mention whatsoever of Spain's authority in the seas within the region in which it has
exclusive rights to non-Christian land space. It does state that any person who is
found "to go for the purpose of trade or any other reason to the islands or mainlands" without the express permission of the Crown is to suffer excommunication,
but this clause does not necessarily imply any claim to authority, let alone possession, in ocean space; it merely grants the kind of authority over overseas possessions
that a sovereign would claim for the land of his or her own nation. The treaty goes
STEWARDSHIP I N T H E WORLD OCEAN
257
slightly farther than the bull in granting the two states a degree of authority in their
respective zones of ocean space: It notes that Portugal's ships shall not sail west of
the line unless the ships are engaged in transit to a Portuguese possession, and vice
versa, in which case the ships shall be guaranteed safe passage. This clause appears to
grant each state certain policing functions (for example, Spain has a right to question Portuguese vessels found west of the line because, as the bull declares, another
nation's ship may not go to a Spanish overseas territorywithout the express permission of the Spanish Crown), but, again, it does not imply possession of the seas.2
Rather, the seas are constructed as a legitimate arena for Spain and Portugal to implement the social power that they are entitled to exercise based on their possession
of land space. In contrast, if Spain and Portugal were granted full possession, as opposed to mere authority, in their sectors, they would presumably also be free to alienate "their"property or to enact use restrictions beyond those explicitly permitted
in the treaty.
In short, Spain's and Portugal's claims to exclusive rights should not be viewed as
claims to possession of the sea. Rather, the two countries' claims implied that the sea
had been divided into "spheres of influence" in which Spain and Portugal were
granted rights of stewardship. Stewardship, though generally associated with benevolent, or at least utilitarian, aims, embodies an assumption of power. The stewarding entity is presumed to have a right to exert control both over the resource or
space being stewarded and over others who might wish to use the stewarded resource in a contrary manner. Indeed, immediately after the treaty was signed, the
Spanish and the Portuguese began to construct the sea as a space supportive of their
specific strategies for dominating distant land spaces.
The Spanish were fortunate in that, in most cases, they had little trouble conquering indigenous cultures, whether by arms or by pathogens, and they soon established a system of mines and, later, plantations. Following this conquest, Spanish sea
power was exercised to restrict trade to certain ports in Spain as well as in the Americas and to specially organized convoys. In part, this centralized control was established to protect shipping from pirates, but it also served to prevent the resources of
the Crown's territories from escaping into the hands of other European powers or
private Spanish merchants who might be tempted to outbid the Spanish Crown and
negotiate their own deals with Creole settlers and miners. Thus Spain constructed
its marine domain as a special space of commerce over which the Crown exercised a
degree of power and control as a means of projecting its power to distant lands. As a
mercantilist power, Spain used this land and sea power to establish and maintain exclusive resource-extraction and trade relations, but it did not claim actual possession of ocean space.
Although Portugal was driven by considerations similar to those of Spain, it
faced a different situation in its sphere of influence. In the Indian Ocean a flourishing trading network was dominated, at that time, by Muslims. The geopolitical
situation in Portugal's sphere of influence demanded a more outwardly aggressive
stance as the Portuguese sought to utilize their authoritywithin the Indian Ocean to
258
THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
control connections with the Indian mainland and with the trade spanning the Indian Ocean to East and Southeast Asia:
Vasco da Gama came to India a second time in 1502 with a fleet of twenty ships fully
equipped for war. Formally proclaiming suzerainty over the Indian Ocean, he imposed a system of passes known as Cartaz on all shipping. Ships which did not carry
the Portuguese pass were plundered and burnt. Indian and Arab ships were prohibited from carrying certain specified commodities of value. They had to confine their
sailing only to authorised ports and never put in at Calicut. (Nambiar 1975,51)
Nambiar's choice of words here is significant. Suzerainty refers to a situation
wherein one party asserts legitimate power over another without a goal of ultimate
incorporation (Black 1990). Again, although unilateral exercise of power within
one's maritime sphere of influence was acceptable, physical incorporation of distant
ocean space within the territory of the state was not a legal norm of the Tordesillas
era.
STEWARDSHIP
AS A CONTINUING
NORM
Debunking the myth of marine enclosure in the Treaty of Tordesillas is important
not just for the sake of historical accuracy but also because it leads us to reassess the
norms that historically guided modern ocean law and that presently bound our
sense of the purpose of marine lines, as well as our sense of possible means and ends
for ocean governance. Reconsideration of these norms is critical as we attempt to
preserve the ocean's utilityboth as a space of connection and as a space that provides
discrete, material resources.
I contend that the overarching norm present in the Treaty of Tordesillas and, indeed, throughout the modern history of ocean governance, is one of stewardship.
Spaces that are stewarded may not be possessed in full as alienable property. Yet individual social actors-or communities of actors-may act in their capacity as stewards to temporarily appropriate, manage, and even transform the stewarded space in
order to ensure that it continues to serve specified social ends. My discussion of the
Treaty of Tordesillas demonstrates that this one event in modern ocean history revolved around the concept of stewardship. A rapid survey of other key events in the
development of the modern ocean regime demonstrates that this norm has continued and that debates in modern ocean governance generally have revolved around
who should compose the community of stewards and to what ends stewardship
should be exercised, rather than being attempts at drawing lines to generate extreme
relations of exclusion or connection.
Although some scholars trace elements of the modern ocean-governance system
to early Phoenician and Greek civilizations (Semple 1931) or to civilizations of the
Indian Ocean (Anand 1983),the consensus is that one of the major influences on
modern ocean law was the system established by the Roman Empire to govern the
Mediterranean. Beyond this assertion, however, scholars disagree on the substantive
content of the Roman legacy. Some, such as Ram Prakash Anand (1983), Percy Thomas Fenn Jr. (1925), and W. Paul Gorrnley (1963), as well as Hugo Grotius, associate
STEWARDSHIP I N THE WORLD OCEAN
259
Rome with the concept of free and open seas, beyond state possession. Others, including Edgar Gold (1981), Michel Mollat du Jourdin (igg3), and Ellen Churchill
Semple (1gi1,1931),point to the Roman legacy as instilling a system of ocean enclosure and state domination. In a similar vein, Benito Mussolini cited the Roman legacy when justifying unilateral governance of the Mediterranean by his Roman
empire (Mack Smith 1976,1982; Gambi 1994).
In fact, the Roman ocean-governance system embodied both of these principles.
Rome claimed rights in the Mediterranean under the doctrine of imperium, a doctrine much like that of stewardship in that it grants states jurisdictional rights in a
given space in order to control uses but does not imply actual possession:
The sea was held to be free to the common use of all men.. . .There were claims to the
right to exercise jurisdiction over some part of the sea, or to possess the imperium:
yet this claim was not expanded into a claim involving any sort of property right in
the sea itself,that is, the claim to imperium was not developed into a claim to domini u m . . ..
The Roman jurists, postulating a legal person which is created in agreement with
the most recent juristic philosophy, regarded the coasts as being protected and
guarded by the Roman people as "a sacred trust of civilization." (Fenn 1925,717,724;
see also Lobingier 1935; Gormley 1963; Steinberg 1996b)
Rome, which for much of its reign controlled the entire Mediterranean shoreline,
clearly was the sole candidate to assume the role of steward, and Rome exercised its
stewardship role as it saw fit, primarily toward the end of maintaining the Mediterranean as a space wherein its troops and goods could be transported among the farflung reaches of the empire. Thus, to the casual observer, the Mediterranean appears
to be "Roman space." But legal studies of Rome's ocean law clearly demonstrate that
the Mediterranean was perceived and governed as a space distinctly outside the Roman state, even as it was recognized as a legitimate arena for the exercise of Roman
power.
A thousand or so years after the fall of the Roman Empire this doctrine of stewardship was reinterpreted for much of the rest of the world ocean in the Treaty of
Tordesillas. Stewardship was now divided between two powers, each operating in its
respective sphere of influence, and the end of stewardship was somewhat transformed, with the goal of facilitating missionary activities in distant lands added to
the more traditional goal of maintaining a friction-free space for transporting imperial troops and commodities. Nonetheless, the overarching norm of stewardship
remained consistent with that of Roman times.
Following Tordesillas,the next major event in ocean governance was the "Battle
of the Books:' a series of writings published in the first half of the seventeenth century as Britain and the Netherlands joined Spain and Portugal as global ocean powers. This debate is generally characterized as a match between polar opposites, the
English jurist John Selden (1972 [1635]),who argued that states have the right to enclose and claim discrete areas of ocean space, and the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius
260
THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
(1916 [1608]),who argued that the ocean must remain open to all. Yet a close reading
of these texts reveals that again all parties were arguing for one variation or another
of the stewardship norm (Steinberg 1996a, 186-200).
Grotius's main innovation was to propose that the holder of imperium, or stewardship, be not one state, as it was in Rome, or individual states in their respective
spheres of influence, as it was under the Tordesillas system, but rather the community of states. Grotius left open the possibility that this system could be modified
where individual states had the ability to police discrete areas of the sea, but even
then these states would be acting merely as stewards and would be obligated to facilitate the rights of all to partake in navigation and fi~hing.~
In contrast to Grotius, Selden focused on those spaces in which coastal states
could exercise effective possession, and here he did permit incorporation into the
territory of the state. But, as with Grotius, state governance in these areas of the
ocean was not to interfere with the natural right to navigation. Selden hadlittle to say
about areas of the sea that lay beyond effectivestate control; presumably, state intervention in these spaces was permissible only to the extent that it was implemented in
order to facilitate the basic human right of navigation. Thus, although Selden did
begin to push against the norm of stewardship in coastal waters, he appeared to be
proposing for the deep seas a doctrine that, like Grotius's, extended the norm of
stewardship from individual states to the community of states. Meanwhile, another
contributor to the Battle of the Books, the Portuguese monk Seraphim de Freitas,
proposed amending the Tordesillas system to give individual states stewardship responsibilities over specific ocean routes, rather than specific territories in ocean
pace.^
Following the Battle of the Books, the ocean-governance system that persisted
through much of the modern era combined elements of the Roman model of stewardship with that proposed by Grotius and Selden. Although Britain was the overwhelming sea power for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it never
sought to claim the world ocean as part of imperial territory. Rather, like Rome before it, Britain claimed the authority to exercise its power as ocean steward in order
to ensure that the world ocean remained a space for the unhindered movement of its
and others' ships. Britain may have "ruled the waves"-an act of imperium-but
maps portraying the empire upon which "the sun never set" indicated only land
space as the territory over which British dominium prevailed.
Britain's empire differed from that of Rome in that Britain-hegemonic as it may
have been-existed within a political system of formally equivalent sovereigns. Assertions of power that gave even the appearance of claiming the bulk of the sea as
British territory likely would have led to counterclaims by other states, which would
have destroyed the "freedom of the seas" that was both a goal and a basis of British
hegemony. Thus Britain largely chose to operate within a Grotian construct in
which the ocean was stewarded by the community of states of which Britain was the
dominant constituent member. For instance, in its attempts to ban the slave trade,
abolish piracy, regulate maritime transport, and protect undersea cables, the com-
STEWARDSHIP I N THE WORLD OCEAN
261
munity of states, under British leadership,tookpains to avoid strategiesthat implied
systems of territorial division or individual state control that could interfere with
the construction of the ocean as a friction-free space of connection (Steinberg1996a)
228-238,259-271; 1999b). By the mid-nineteenth century this Grotian governance
system was joined by a Seldenian one in which narrow coastal strips were permitted
to be incorporated within the territory of individual states,but with the proviso that
this possession of ocean space be limited by respect for the natural right of all individuals to navigate across the entirety of the ocean's surface.
In recent decades this multifaceted stewardship regime has gained further comp1exity.A resurgence of the Tordesillas system of stewardship can be seen in the creation of EEZS that emerged in the 1970s and were enshrined in the 1982 U.N.
Convention on the Law of the Sea. Within an EEZ, which extends up to 200 nautical
miles from a state's coastline, a coastal state may claim policing rights, but not full
sovereign authority, in the interest of stewarding the zone's living and nonliving resources. Further U.N. agreements since 1982 suggest that limited authority of individual or groups of coastal states may be extended beyond the present zoo-nauticalmile limit. One such concord was the 1995Agreement for the Implementation of the
Provisions of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea Relating to
the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory
Fish Stocks. At the same time, the 1982 convention extends the Grotian system of
community stewardship from deep-sea "international waters" to the seabed beneath these waters. Finally, recent initiatives such as the Marine StewardshipCouncil-a fish-product eco-labeling program developed by Unilever and the World
Wide Fund for Nature--extend global ocean governance beyond the realm of states
and enlist fishers, processors, retailers, nongovernmental organizations, and consumers as stewards of the ocean's living resources (Steinberg lggga).
Discourse on the geography of the sea, particularly by political geographers, fiequently revolves around lines of division: How is a boundary line calculated?How is
it communicated?What activities should be permitted behind the line? The confusion and misunderstanding surrounding the Tordesillas line should demonstrate
that a perspective wherein lines are perceived solely as graphic representations of division leaves one with, at best, a partial understanding of history and the social construction of space. I have argued that the Tordesillas line should be viewed not so
much as aradical division of the ocean but, rather, as one in along series of events adjusting a long-standing, and continuing, system of marine stewardship.
In fact,lines in ocean space frequently serve purposes quite apart from the end of
division. For eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sailors from Europe and North
America, perhaps the most socially meaningful "1ine"was the equator. "Crossing the
line" was an event celebrated by the ritual dunking of sailors upon their first venture
into Southern Hemisphere waters. Other lines often found on maps, such as those
depicting common ocean routes, graphically represent vectors of connection. Still
262
THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
other lines, including latitude and longitude lines, rhumb lines, and bathymetric
lines, facilitate the making of these connections. Indeed, even the Tordesillas line
may be viewed as a line of connection, because it facilitated the connection of Portugal and Spain with their distant land territories. When one destroys the myth of individual states having or even desiring absolute control of ocean space-which is
implied by graphic representations but has never been a reality-lines take on a variety of meanings that constitute, complement, and, at times, push the limits of the
dominant norm of stewardship.
Just as this discussion suggests that we think twice before accepting that lines
drawn across ocean space necessarily divide, it also suggests that we rethink the entire dichotomy of division and connection in the context of the broader norm of
marine stewardship. Stewardship historically has been exercised by various entities,
including the state, the church, commercial interests, and the populace at large. At
different times the norm of stewardship has been operationalized by one actor over
all known ocean space, by individual actors in their discrete, parceled domains, and
collectively by a community of actors. It has been implemented for a range of ends,
from military mobility to the conservation of the ocean's living resources.
Finally, a consideration of marine stewardship-and the lines that often enable
it-should remind us that stewardship is not necessarily the only, or best, means of
governing ocean space and of preserving its function as a space of connection, a
thriving ecosystem, a space of individual or collective escape from terrestrial hardships, or a resource for human survival. Other societies have developed oceangovernance systems outside the stewardship paradigm, from those that have viewed
the sea as fundamentally possessible, like land space, such as the island societies of
Micronesia, to those that have viewed the sea as a pure space of connection insulated
from exertions of social power by land-based entities, like those of the societies bordering the Indian Ocean, prior to the arrival of Europeans (Steinberg 1996b).
Stretching the commonly accepted boundaries of what is possible in ocean governance, some scholars have suggested that the expansion of individual states' territories to encompass the entirety of ocean space is likely (Zacher and McConnell 1990;
Ball 1996). Others have proposed that the entire ocean be bounded as one political
unit and its social function redefined. These scholars assert that the attitude of the
world community toward the ocean must go beyond one of stewarding the sea so
that it is available for human use to one in which the sea is actively possessed and
used by the entirety of the world community so that it may serve global needs and reduce social inequality on land (Van Dyke, Zaelke, and Hewison 1993;Borgese 1998).
Whatever the precise lines drawn across the sea, and whatever goals these lines
are designed to serve, a line in ocean space, like ocean space itself, does more than
simply divide the terrestrial land spaces that "matter.)' Geographers increasingly are
turning to the sea to improve their understanding of the primarily terrestrial social
and physical systems that affect, and are affected by, humanity (Steinberg ~gggc).
By
drawing lines across the sea, geographers not only assert divisions and connections;
they also impose a social imprint. Oceans may connect or divide, or they may be im-
STEWARDSHIP I N THE WORLD OCEAN
263
plicated in more radical strategies for the social organization of space that lie outside
the norm of state stewardship that traditionally has guided social intervention in
marine space. By rethinking the relationship of the ocean to land, to society, and to
marine resources, geographers can contribute to a new era of marine-and globalgovernance.
1. Neither the bull nor the treaty considers uninhabited islands or portions of the mainland. It is
unclear whether Spain or Portugal legitimately could have used the authority bestowed by the bull
and the treaty to claim these territories.
2. The treaty at one point does refer to "the said seas of the said King of Portuga1,"but this phrase
is so out of character with the intent expressed elsewhere in the treaty that it is taken here as an abbreviated way of stating, "the seas ivithin which the king of Portugal has exclusive rights to non-Christian
lands."
3. Grotius left no doubt that navigation was a right granted to all of humanity under natural law.
Although he generally adopted a similar position toward fishing, at one point he equivocated because
"in a way it can be maintained that fish are exhaustible" (Grotius 1916 [1608], 43).
4. This work, Justijication for the Portuguese Domination ofAsia, has been translated from Latin
into French, Spanish, and Portuguese, but not English. For an extensive English summary and discussion, see Alexandrowicz (1967).
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