BYNKERSHOEK, Cornelis van.

Opera minora, olim separatim, nunc conjunctim edita. Recensuit & nonnulla addidit auctor.

Leiden, Johannes van der Linden, 1730. Small 4to (205 x 150 mm), pp. [xiv], 571, [23]; title printed in red and black; contemporary blind-stamped vellum over boards, slightly soiled. First edition of this collection of Bynkershoek’s works. It includes his treatise on the dominion of the sea, De dominio maris dissertatio, originally published separately in 1703, which is generally accepted as being the first exposition of the principle of delimiting territorial waters. ‘With respect to the general question as to the capability of appropriation, he agreed with Puffendorf rather than with Grotius. While holding that the open ocean could not be wholly brought under dominion, he admitted, with Selden, not only that large parts of the sea are susceptible of appropriation, but that various nations had at different times enjoyed such dominion: the fluidity of the sea was not a bar to its occupation, and by taking possession of it the same right was acquired as by taking possession of the land. But he declared there was no instance at the time he wrote of any ruler possessing maritime dominion of that kind, unless when the surrounding territory belonged to him, and that the general freedom of the seas for navigation had been established both by usage and by various treaties . . . . He showed how uncertain and unsatisfactory were the limits previously proposed, and, following Grotius, he laid down the principle that the dominion of a state extended over the neighbouring sea as far, and only as far, as it was able to command and control it from the land’ (Fulton, Sovereignty of the sea pp. 555–6).‘Bynkershoek, a lawyer who served as a member and eventually as president of the Supreme Court of Holland, is perhaps best known for his treatise on the law of the sea, a topic of particular concern to the Dutch of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries . . . . Because he sometimes draws upon the practice of states to establish his conclusions, Bynkershoek is often, if misleadingly, considered a pioneer of international legal positivism, the theory that international law must be inferred from state practice rather than deduced from natural law; in fact he draws upon both’ (Brown, International relations in political thought pp. 252–281).

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