On 25 August 2026, Danila Raskov presented his paper, “Commerce, Improvement and Property: Some Humble Notes on Grotius, Locke and the Political Economy of Empire,” at the workshop “Political Economy of Empire,” hosted by the Department of Economic History at Uppsala University.

The workshop opened with a keynote lecture by Professor Steve Pincus of the University of Chicago, who presented his new book on the British Empire. The workshop brought together scholars working on the political economy of empire from historical and comparative perspectives. The full workshop program is available on the Uppsala University website.

How did a Political Economy of Empire emerge in the 17th century around two concerns: freedom of trade and property rights? How could natural law make the sea common and American land “waste”?

“Every nation is free to travel to every other nation, and to trade with it.” This proposition by the young Hugo Grotius seems universal. The sea must remain open to navigation; no state may claim a monopoly over routes. Yet the argument emerged from a specific dispute.

In 1603, the Dutch captain Jacob van Heemskerck seized the Portuguese carrack Santa Catarina near Singapore. Its extraordinarily valuable cargo was transferred to the recently established Dutch East India Company (VOC). Grotius’s De iure praedae (Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty) sought to establish why this act could be considered lawful. Chapter XII was published anonymously in 1609 as Mare Liberum (The Free Sea, or a Disquisition on the Right of the Dutch to Engage in the East Indian Trade).

His reasoning followed a striking juridical sequence: suum → iniuria → bellum iustum → praeda.

An infringement of what belongs to someone constitutes an injury; injury may justify war; and a just war may yield lawful prize. In the absence of an independent and effective judge, Grotius allowed individuals to punish violations of natural law. In distant Asian waters, a company captain could thus appear not simply as a pirate, but as an executor of justice.

The freedom of navigation was therefore both a universal principle and a situated claim. It challenged Portuguese monopoly, but simultaneously legitimised Dutch access and VOC expansion. Free commerce did not stand outside empire: it could become one of its languages. 

John Selden countered in Mare Clausum (The Closed Sea), published in 1635. The sea, he maintained, was no less capable of dominion than land. Coastal waters and fisheries could fall under sovereign control. The opposition between the “free” and “closed” sea already contained the modern compromise: freedom of navigation alongside territorial waters and regulated fishing.