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This chapter begins with an assessment of the basis or bases for the assertion of jurisdiction by the United Kingdom over Pitcairn Island as understood in public international law. It does so by a brief analysis of the concept of jurisdiction and how public international law constructs the idea of the assertion of jurisdiction by States. It reflects on the jurisdictional position of the United Kingdom in respect of Pitcairn Island from a historical as well as modern perspective, though this discussion all the while assumes that the United Kingdom does indeed have sovereign title over the territory (or territories) at issue. The chapter then addresses the question of territorial acquisition — of how public international law has provided over time for modes of acquisition of sovereign title, and through what process or processes title in respect of Pitcairn Island might have come to reside in ultimo in the United Kingdom. It is shown that sovereign title itself opens up the vexed matter of the legal obligations of States in respect of their territories and, the nature and extent of human rights obligations of States under public international law are considered. These themes are developed in the penultimate section of the chapter to contemplate how this experience might inform or shape notions of the concept of law itself, and what it tells us in general terms about the application of the law in anomalous or unusual spaces.

Territory is crucial in determining the sovereignty of a state. As Oppenheim has noted, ‘a State without a territory is not possible’. This does not mean territoriality is the single criterion of personality in international law; however statehood without a reasonably defined geographical base is inconceivable. This introductory part examines the long historical evolution of the international law of territory. It examines the concept of territorial acquisition such as conquest, cession, secession and terra nullius. The introduction also gives an overview of the role of territory in the sovereignty of a particular state. Discussion also focuses on territorial exclusivity and territorial sovereignty of a state wherein the boundaries, the jurisdiction and the right to self-determination of the state are examined. Further discussion also focuses on other existing issues regarding the extent of territory.

In pre-colonial Africa, the concept of fixed borders typical of European-style states was a foreign and unfamiliar concept. Although no fixed borders were imminent in pre-colonial Africa, identifiable empires and states were evident in some areas of the continent, and frontier zones were widespread. This chapter discusses the concept of territory in colonial Africa wherein the territories once defined in personal rather than territorial terms were subject to foreign rule. By the late 1870s, the European Estates were no longer interested in trading advantages and coastal forts but directed their interest towards territorial acquisition and the extension of the national sovereignties of the expanding Europe. While there may be several underlying reasons for the European conquest of Africa, one of the most evident was that the territorial acquisition of Africa meant the preservation of the uneasy balance of power in Europe. Chapter 1 discusses the modes of acquisition used by the European States, ranging from treaties, to cession, to conquest, and the gradual transformation of colonial protectorates. Also included in the chapter are discussions on the prevailing spheres of influence that had an impact on the process of land acquisition in Africa.

This chapter talks about a case that related to how sovereignty over Janan lied with Bahrain, and therefore the chapter favours in the negative regarding paragraph 3 of the dispositif. But as the International Court of Justice found that sovereignty over Janan lied with Qatar, and as the author of this chapter agrees generally with the delimitation line drawn in the judgment, she voted in favour of paragraph 6. She further believes that, had it so chosen, the Court could also have grounded the title of Bahraini in the Hawars regarding the law of territorial acquisition. Among acts occurring in the Hawars were some that did have relevance in relation to a legal title. These effectivités were no sparser than those on which a title has been founded in other cases. Even if Qatar had, by the time of these early effectivités, extended its own sovereignty to the coast of the peninsula facing the Hawars, it performed no comparable effectivités in the Hawars on its own. These elements are sufficient to displace any presumption of title by the coastal state.

This chapter presents the theory of appropriation as interpreted by several intellectuals such as Rousseau, Schmitt, and Kant. It focuses on various writings such as Second Discourse (by Rousseau), nomos (by Schmitt), and Metaphysik der Sitten (by Kant). It also discusses war, territorial acquisition, and its effects.

A new role did emerge for the little ship: Following years of service in sweltering tropical climates, the Saginaw and her crew were finally in for a drastic change to a beautiful, cold, and mostly unknown region. The ship's move north was prompted by one of the most cost-efficient yet highly ridiculed territorial acquisitions in American history. The Saginaw arrived at San Francisco on April 7 of that year, where she would outfit and recruit for Alaska, skipping the longer call at Mare Island across the bay. Commander Mitchell was back among the seedy dives in the Barbary Coast again and having the same trouble locating a crew to replace those sailors whose times were expired, and those who ran.

This chapter corroborates the need to rethink the traditional periodization that had long defined conflict between the United States and the Seminole. It examines the reaction of the Seminole to the events unfolding in post-1783 Florida, as the Florida Indians attempted to remain neutral while the Georgians, Creeks, and Spanish clashed around them. From 1783 to 1812, the Seminole found themselves unwillingly entangled in these conflicts and steadily drawn into the geopolitical forces and alignments consuming the region of East Florida. The onset of war in 1812 between the United States and Great Britain changed everything, and the course of U.S.-Seminole relations entered an entirely new phase, one dominated by outright warfare accompanied by aggressive American territorial acquisition, and one in which the Seminole could not withstand.

This chapter addresses the question of what caused the Dust Bowl by looking at the social and economic developments driving the changing relations of humans to one another and to the land globally in the period immediately preceding it. A distinguishing feature of the new imperialism was the marked increase in the rate of territorial acquisition by Europe, the United States, and Britain. The racially justified expropriation of the land and people enriched and increased the capacities of Global North nations and their economic elites—who financed, carried out, and benefited from this expropriation—to reinforce their rule. As David Naguib Pellow writes, “natural resources are used and abused to support racial hegemony and domination and have been at the core of this process for a half-millennium.” Thus, expropriation, exploitation, and domination paved the way directly to the Dust Bowl and the global crisis of soil erosion by the 1930s.

This chapter explains how the cartographic enterprise can be read as a “form of territorial acquisition” on the part of mapping geologists, focusing the mapping of geology of Cornwall, England. It highlights the importance of maps spatial instruments and as a visual language and as an important tool in the “visual technology” of the natural sciences. This chapter explains that survey of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall depended on the reductive visual authority of the map as a guide to what could and could not be seen.

Kant’s objections to colonialism are cast in juridical terms, focusing on the ways in which it is contrary to requirements of right under his conception of international law. Colonial conquest is an illicit ground for going to war, and colonization is an illicit mode of conduct after a war, even if the war itself was fought on other grounds. This chapter explains Kant’s arguments for the following claims: (i) Acquiring territory or securing markets is never a legitimate ground for war. (ii) Conquest is wrongful, but colonization is a defective form of conquest, worse than simply incorporating the territory into the conquering nation. (iii) Although colonial rule is not itself rightful, it has its own internal standard of adequacy, which colonial powers historically failed to satisfy.