Law comprises a particularly important part of the social construction of territory and region. This function of the law is often obscured by an enduring emphasis on the study of legal systems that appear more or less coterminous with political jurisdictions. But legal practices crossed boundaries and helped to constitute legal cultures of unruly dimensions. In empire, law traveled with legal officials and also with merchants, sailors, soldiers, sojourners, and settlers. Legal practices often closely intertwined with those of the peoples with whom imperial agents came into contact, creating continuities in patterns of legal pluralism across substantively different legal orders.Yet we should not confuse global legal continuities with the homogenization of territory. Legal routines and institutions also marked discrete spaces of empire—the corridors and enclaves of imperial control. While this use of law in shaping imperial space was itself a global phenomenon, it also set in motion political tensions and processes that helped to create regional diversification.
... In my sea yarn, the oceans have a quality of lumpiness about them, pirates strain not to break the law, and international norms take shape not at Westphalia but at the edges of the Indian Ocean.