The Free Sea or The Freedom of the Sea (Latin: Mare Liberum), is a book on international law written by the Dutch jurist and philosopher Hugo Grotius. In The Free Sea, Grotius formulated the new principle that the sea was international territory and all nations were free to use it for seafaring trade. The disputation was directed towards the Portuguese and their claim of monopoly on the East Indian Trade. Grotius wrote the treatise while being a counsel to the Dutch East India Company
Grotius' argument was that the sea was free to all, and that nobody had the right to deny others access to it. In chapter I, he lays out his objective, which is to demonstrate "briefly and clearly that the Dutch have the right to sail to the East Indies", and, also, "to engage in trade with the people there". He then goes on to describe how he bases his argument on what he calls the "most specific and unimpeachable axiom of the Law of Nations, called a primary rule or first principle, the spirit of which is self-evident and immutable", namely that: "Every nation is free to travel to every other nation, and to trade with it." From this premise, Grotius goes on to argue that this self-evident and immutable right to travel and to trade requires (1) a right of innocent passage over land, and (2) a similar right of innocent passage at sea. The sea, however, is more like air than land, and is, as opposed to land, common property of all:
The air belongs to this class of things for two reasons. First, it is not susceptible of occupation; and second its common use is destined for all men. For the same reasons the sea is common to all, because it is so limitless that it cannot become a possession of any one, and because it is adapted for the use of all, whether we consider it from the point of view of navigation or of fisheries.
The Free Sea was published by Elzevier in the spring of 1609. It has been translated into English twice. The first translation was by Richard Hakluyt, some time between the publication of The Free Sea in 1609 and Hakluyt's death in 1616. Hakluyt's translation was first published in 2004 as part of Liberty Fund's "Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics" series. The second translation was by Ralph Van Deman Magoffin, associate professor of Greek and Roman History at Johns Hopkins University. This translation was a part of a debate on free shipping during the First World War (see Freedom of the seas), and was published by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Oxford University Press in 1916 as "The Freedom of the Seas, Or, The Right Which Belongs to the Dutch to Take Part in the East Indian Trade",
Notes
- Scott, James Brown, "Introductory note". In: Grotius, Hugo (1916) The Freedom of the Seas, New York: Oxford University Press, p. vi.
- Grotius, Hugo (1916) The Freedom of the Seas, New York: Oxford University Press, p. 7.
- Grotius, Hugo (1916) The Freedom of the Seas, New York: Oxford University Press, p. 28.
- Armitage, David, "Introduction". In: Grotius, Hugo (2004) The Free Sea, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, pp. xxii-xxiii.
- Grotius, Hugo (1916) The Freedom of the Seas, New York: Oxford University Press.