Edited by Jaime Moreno Tejada (Chulalongkorn University, Thailand) and Bradley Tatar (UNIST, South Korea), Transnational Frontiers of Asia and Latin America since 1800 (Routledge, 2017) includes two articles of legal historical interest.The first is by Daniel S. Margolies, Virginia Wesleyan College: "Spatiality, jurisdiction, and sovereignty in early Latin American approaches to the Law of the Sea," 85-97. An excerpt:
Jurisdictional claims over oceanic spaces in the immediate postwar period deserve close attention, since the oceanic spaces proximate to sovereign coastlines were a central focus of global competition for control of seabed resources and the ability to construct and regulate the overall jurisdictional order of the post-World War II world system. Latin American nations were at the center of this moment of political-economic competition and legal innovation, particularly Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Peru. These nations individually and forcefully pursued expansive sovereignty and jurisdictional claims on the offshore continental shelf....The purpose of this chapter is to explore the contingent involvement of...Latin American states in this project of reconceptualizing and restructuring global ocean spaces as new varieties of sovereign and jurisdictional space, or what can be conceptualized as new or freshly expanded state space.The second article is by Alastair McClure, McGill University: "State building and problematic geopolitical spaces in South Asia: The Himalayas and the extradition treaty of 1855," 98-110. A passage from the opening:
In the midst of...state building drives of the nineteenth century, the Himalayan border between colonial India and Nepal...remained a relatively unmanageable terrain...[As] ruling powers began to take steps towards modern statehood, the protection of trade, control of movement, and concerns surrounding rebellious networks became increasingly important issues. Once it was clear that neat lines of sovereignty could not be drawn across the Himalayan border, the region became a site of power play between these emerging neighboring states and the individuals that transgressed the thresholds. These issues of security and power consistently spilled over ill-defined boundaries as criminals and men of "bad character" resided in or traveled through this borderland to escape punishment....Piecing together information from the correspondence between the Resident of Nepal and the British Government of India, this chapter seeks to offer insight into the "specific cultures of governance" possessed by these states...The chapter will seek to outline how the priorities of Nepal and colonial India converged and clashed through attempts to pacify this region, particularly in relation to the formation of laws of extradition and the policing and maintenance of their borders.Further information on the book is available here and on Google Books here.
