ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the development of maritime law from the late medieval period to the beginning of the nineteenth century. It discusses codes and practices of law in medieval Europe, and considers how these developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when European rulers sought to exert greater authority at sea. The chapter explores the legal arguments and developments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially concerning piracy, which eventually transformed maritime law. Maritime law might be a different matter because a series of written codes existed and were widely employed, developing in two traditions – one in the Mediterranean, the other in northern Europe. England was especially problematic for the Venetians because its sailors were highly litigious, but it lacked a unified body of maritime law like Colbert’s 1681 ordonnance into the eighteenth century. Controlling violence at sea has been a perpetual concern of lawmakers.
