ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors discusses the three forms in which maritime cabotage law is applied in different sovereign states are; protectionist, liberal and flexible approaches. Consequently, mainland cabotage became an attractive option as many developing nations employed flag-discriminatory and other protectionist practices. This allowed them to control trade and other maritime activities in their mainland territories, through their national instrumentalities of commerce. The law of maritime cabotage has three principal variants, namely island cabotage, mainland cabotage and general cabotage. In the European Union (EU), providers of mainland cabotage services are somewhat liberated from the protectionist strictures, such as crewing requirements, that exist within EU island cabotage. The carriage of containerized goods and, in some cases, empty containers is the principal maritime activities in the mainland cabotage trades of Malaysia, India, China and the United States of America. The biggest category of activities for mainland cabotage is in the oil and gas and container trades.
