Today, international treaties, states, institutions, corporations, and courts all recognize that the ocean is divisible and, in parts even appropriable, in the same way as land. Indeed, modern international law continues to express a principle of maritime freedom, though it is a far narrower form of freedom than Grotius initially claimed. The principle of the freedom of the seas came to define oceanic activities from navigation to fishing. The Grotian imaginary of the sea persisted for centuries. That being the case, it was Portugal that had acted wrongfully in claiming exclusive rights of maritime navigation and commerce with the Indies. As such, it was irreducible to private ownership or state sovereignty. The sea was fluid and constantly in movement it was indivisible, unoccupiable, inexhaustible, indeed unalterable for better or worse via human activity. Land, being fixed, cultivable and, most importantly, exhausted by its use, could be regarded as divisible, subject to public and private ownership, and demarcated by national boundaries. Grotius argued that the sea was entirely unlike land. On retainer from the company, the jurist Hugo Grotius-then just in his early twenties!-wrote a brief that is now regarded as a foundational text, Mare Liberum, or The Free Sea. Portugal was outraged by the loss, while the VOC was keen to defend its actions. Such trade promised fabulous wealth: the goods recovered from this event alone sold for over three million guilders in the markets of Amsterdam, an amount that was roughly double the capital of the English East India Company. The incident was part of an imperial struggle between European states over access to trade with the East Indies. The Catarina’s capture occupies an important place in the history of international law. In the time since that event, projects of reclamation have increased Singapore’s total land area by 25 percent, and Changi airport occupies one such reclaimed part, sitting where the shoals used to be. He swiftly captured the ship just off Singapore’s eastern shoals. Having missed the first, he awoke on the morning of February 25, 1603, to find the second, the Catarina, right before his eyes. Heemskerk, the story goes, made a wild dash to Johor from Tioman Island upon receiving news that two Portuguese carracks laden with spices, silks, and porcelain, would be moving through the Straits. This makes sense: in Martine van Ittersum’s rich description of the incident, she notes that it took place at the entrance of the Singapore Straits. The legal historians Antony Anghie and Kevin Tan have informed me that in the course of my arrival, via Terminal 3 of Singapore’s Changi Airport, I must have crossed – on foot – the probable spot where, more than 400 years ago, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) Captain Jacob van Heemskerk captured the Santa Catarina, a Portuguese ship. I write this essay in an office in Singapore, where I have just learned an arresting fact.
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