ABSTRACT
During the imperial era, different powers sought strategic control of oceanic passage through or more direct access to their colonies. Following contestations over sea lanes, the high seas were clarified as belonging to all and to no one.1 Since ships sailed mostly on this global commons, they then were constituted as oceanic signifiers of deterritorialized possession or nationality-at-sea: ‘Freedom is thus the guiding principle of the law of the sea, but it is a principle strongly mediated by nationality’. In 1905, the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague affirmed that the flag of registry rather than source of ownership determined a ship’s nationality: ‘the ship’s national state has exclusive dominion over the ship; and no other nation can exercise dominion over that ship’ (Alderton and Winchester 2002, 36).
