Governing the Sea in the Early Modern Era: Essays in Honor of Robert C. Ritchie

Early modern European governments and their subjects had difficulty agreeing to laws governing behavior on the sea—an environment that featured watery borders, rampant piracy, the threat of free trade, and the large-scale transportation of human cargo. The essays in this volume explore how the exploitation of the oceans changed the institution of slavery, long-distance trade, property crime, the environment, literature, and memory from medieval times to the nineteenth century.