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

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.