Jurisdictional Accumulation : An Early Modern History of Law, Empires, and Capital

Présentation de l'éditeur : "The majority of European early modern empires - the Castilian, French, Dutch, and English/British - developed practices of jurisdictional accumulation, distinguished by the three categories of extensions, transports, and transplants of authority. This book is concerned with various diplomatic and colonial agents which enabled the transports and transplants of sovereign authority. Through historical analyses of ambassadors and consuls in the Mediterranean based on primary and secondary material, and on the empires' Atlantic imperial expansions and conquests, the book makes a major analytical contribution to historical sociology. As an interdisciplinary exercise in conceptual innovation based on a Political Marxist framework and its concept of social property relations, the book goes beyond common binaries in both conventional and critical histories. The new concept of jurisdictional accumulation brings ambassadors, consuls, merchants, and lawyers out of the shadows of empire and onto the main stage of the construction of modern international relations and international law." "This book links law, empires, and capital through a Political Marxist history of early modern extraterritoriality framed by the new concept of jurisdictional accumulation. Based on secondary and primary material, the concept reveals new aspects of the Spanish, French, English/British and Dutch early modern empires through their colonial and diplomatic practices and social property relations. Going beyond the classic focus on embassy chapels in Northern Europe shows the inadequacy of conventional narratives of extraterritoriality for defining the modern international legal order. The early modern was jurisdictional, but not only because of the plurality and overlapping of jurisdictional regimes. The early modern was jurisdictional because of the use of jurisdictional rights, titles, and functions as institutions and subjectivities, used as means of imperial ownership and rule over indigenous groups and against competing empires. A variety of actors used jurisdictional devices and arguments that shaped imperial expansion in ways defined here as extensions, transplants and transports of authority. Jurisdictional accumulation contrasts to mercantilism and capitalism, and constitutes a significant mode of expansion that brings ambassadors, consuls, merchants, and lawyers out of the shadows of empire and onto the main stage of the construction of modern international relations and international law"-- Provided by publisher Présentation de l'éditeur : "The majority of European early modern empires - the Castilian, French, Dutch, and English/British - developed practices of jurisdictional accumulation, distinguished by the three categories of extensions, transports, and transplants of authority. This book is concerned with various diplomatic and colonial agents which enabled the transports and transplants of sovereign authority. Through historical analyses of ambassadors and consuls in the Mediterranean based on primary and secondary material, and on the empires' Atlantic imperial expansions and conquests, the book makes a major analytical contribution to historical sociology. As an interdisciplinary exercise in conceptual innovation based on a Political Marxist framework and its concept of social property relations, the book goes beyond common binaries in both conventional and critical histories. The new concept of jurisdictional accumulation brings ambassadors, consuls, merchants, and lawyers out of the shadows of empire and onto the main stage of the construction of modern international relations and international law." The majority of European early modern empires - the Spanish, French, Dutch and English/British - are best characterised as developing practices of jurisdictional accumulation. These practices are distinguished by the three categories of extensions, transports, and transplants of authority, and this book is mostly concerned with various diplomatic and colonial agents which enabled the transports and transplants of their sovereign's authority. Through historical analyses of ambassadors and consuls in the Mediterranean based on primary and secondary material, and on the empires' Atlantic imperial expansions and conquests, the book makes two major analytical contributions. It firstly develops jurisdictional accumulation as a conceptual innovation, based, secondly, on an interdisciplinary mix of methodological angles. These intertwined contributions enable us to go beyond common binaries in both conventional and critical histories of international relations and international law through the use of a Political Marxist framework and its concept of social property relations. Jurisdictional accumulation reveals varieties of early modern extraterritorial practices and how consuls, ambassadors, merchants and lawyers drove European imperial expansion. This new concept challenges histories of territorial sovereignty in international relations and international law and contributes to early modern mercantilism and capitalism. Cover Half title Title Copyright Dedication Epigraph Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1 | Early Modern Extraterritoriality 2 | Historical Sociology, Marxism, and Law 3 | Social Property Relations 4 | Ambassadors 5 | Consuls 6 | Colonial Practices of Jurisdictional Accumulation 7 - Analytical Crossroads Epilogue Bibliography Index