1 - Local Maritime Jurisdiction in the Early English Caribbean

Summary

Abstract In the seventeenth century, England claimed jurisdiction over sea corridors in the Caribbean, hoping to exercise those claims from Jamaica. The state was forced to rely on local elites who hired privateers for Jamaica's maritime security, thereby making England's maritime jurisdiction a local phenomenon. During the first two decades of the colony, the English state attempted but failed to exert its own control over the Caribbean and get around local actors. The boldest state attempt to subvert colonial jurisdiction was the 1670 Treaty of Madrid, but local conditions won out, and Jamaican governors continued to control maritime affairs. A gradual transition to state control began in 1675 and lasted another twenty years, ending the period of local jurisdiction.

Keywords: Jamaica; Privateers; Law; Treaty; Regionalism; Piracy

Introduction

Early modern European states overflowed with ambition to control maritime space in the Americas and elsewhere, but they mostly lacked the resources to fulfil those dreams. By the seventeenth century, most states with imperial dreams had established colonies in the highly contested close quarters of the Caribbean region, all of which relied on maritime trade and defence for their survival. Owing to treaties and papal bulls dating back to the fifteenth century, however, Spain claimed jurisdiction over nearly all land and sea spaces in the Americas, making subjects of any other states mere interlopers in a purported Spanish monopoly zone. England, emerging as a main rival to Spain, aggressively pursued landed colonies and sea-based claims in the 1600s, seeking to puncture that Iberian bubble. As Lauren Benton demonstrates, maritime jurisdictional claims were important for empire building; although some believed in a concept of “free seas,” international jurists agreed that a state could exert jurisdiction over sea corridors but could not own the seas. The English state was keen to establish its own sea corridors in the Caribbean despite Spanish dominance, thereby cementing its presence. Only sizable navy fleets policing these corridors and protecting English trading interests could hope to turn the state's maritime ambitions into reality, but it was impossible to commit such a force that far from home during the early-modern period.

In the latter half of the seventeenth century, England pinned its hopes for some form of Caribbean marine control on its newly conquered and centrally located island colony of Jamaica.