Georg Berkemer - Beyond the Line

Neofelis Verlag

German National Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the German National Library:

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2014 Neofelis Verlag UG (haftungsbeschrnkt), Berlin

www.neofelis-verlag.de

All rights reserved.

Cover Design: Marija Skara

Epub 2.0

ISBN: 978-3-943414-31-8

Contents

Michael Mann / Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger

Georg Berkemer

Michael Mann

Derek L. Elliott / Sebastian R. Prange

Margret Frenz

Frank Schulze-Engler

Ute Fendler

Ana Sobral

Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger

Introduction: Beyond the Line

Constructions and Concepts with Focus on the Southern Oceans

Michael Mann / Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger

1. Beyond which Line?

The title of this volume, Beyond the Line, refers to the fact that all its contributions address constructions and concepts elaborated with regard to the Southern Oceans. Beyond the Line draws on the phrase no peace beyond the line that appeared in the peace treaty of Cateau-Cambrsis which was concluded in 1559. Both phrases became quite well known in historical research. However, the question remains what line is actually referred to? Many essays have been written on this subject and James A. Williamson, in his famous study Hawkins of Plymouth , seems to provide an ultimate solution:

In peace or war in Europe there was no peace beyond the line. The phrase is often quoted by people who do not explain what line they mean. The Tropic of Cancer will not by itself answer the question, neither will the lines of demarcation. Line is in fact a misquotation, which should be lines. The lines of amity were verbally agreed upon by the French and Spanish negotiators of the Peace of Cateau-Cambrsis in 1559. They were to be the Tropic of Cancer and the prime meridian passing through Ferro in the Canaries. On the European side of both lines the treaty was to be binding; west and south of them it was to be disregarded. The agreement was a belated recognition of what had long been the practice.

The peace treaty of Cateau-Cambrsis did not mention any concrete line as a line of demarcation. Only an oral agreement added to the treaty is said to have indicated some lines of amity. Academic research maintained, first, that the addition to the peace treaty did in fact refer to two lines fixing an imaginary Atlantic cross based on the Tropic of Cancer and the European understanding of a global Meridian and, second, that peace was only valid on the European side of the lines.

Williamson resumes that from the sixteenth century on the phrase no peace beyond the line referred to European sovereigns well-established practice of issuing letters of marque and reprisal. It was also in some way taken for granted that such letters created and demarcated the space for buccaneering, freebooting, and piracy in a maritime space defined by meridian and longitude. The line was constructed on the Atlantic Ocean and made the maritime territories a legal, political, and cultural construction in cartography since Early Modern History. European peace treaties among sovereigns were in almost all cases written documents and the stipulation of the validity of peace and war overseas was not congruent with contemporary European international law. This might explain why no preserving text of the oral agreement exists. In essence, however, European bilateral and multilateral peace treaties were considered to be of universal value. But in reference to trade and commercial matters it was different. The Spanish persistently defended de jure regulations against de facto practice and implementation to ensure their trading monopoly with the colonies in the Caribbean and Central America, thereby trying to defend a space for their own mercantile operations.

The line only became a matter of bilateral and multilateral regulations in the course of the seventeenth century. After the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and the founding of the Northern European East India trading companies such as the English East India Company in 1600 and the Dutch Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie in 1602, particularly the Dutch claimed free access to all oceans of the globe. This debate basically continued the old legal question of mare clausum and mare liberum . Interestingly, at the same time, the line (always singular, never plural lines) began to be increasingly mentioned in European treaties. It was understood that the Tropic of Cancer, i. e., the equinoctial, marked off all colonial territories, roughly distinguishing between Europe and the rest of the world.

A second line was not explicitly addressed but implicitly thought of: the meridian passing through the Canary Islands and the Azores. According to present day geography, it is not possible to draw the line that way but, in accordance with nautical knowledge in the sixteenth century when methods of determining latitudes did not exist, While it seems clear that in Early Modern History the line was the Tropic of Cancer, the northern equinoctial and the equator were, however, often mixed up, both denominations being used at the same time in different documents.

During the eighteenth century the equator became the line, indicating the growing maritime dominance of England, a country that at all refused to accept the Caribbean as a maritime space outside the sphere of treaties. At the same time, the meridian disappeared as the complementary line of the Atlantic cross (the Tropic of Cancer and the meridian). From the eighteenth century on, the equator separated a northern civilised West from the sharply contrasting rest of the world, in particular the East. Along with this change, the meaning of the line shifted from a geopolitical to a more cultural one.

As part of the cultural divide, rituals on board ships marked the transition into another world during the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. According to Francis Rogers, when sailing to the West Indiesand therefore crossing the Tropic of Cancer!at the beginning of the eighteenth century, all people on board the ship had the choice of either paying a bottle of brandy and a pound of sugar or, instead, of being ducked into the ocean. The person who refused to pay was plunged into the water from the main yardarm secured only by a rope and was then hauled up again. This procedure was repeated three times. At some stage at the end of the eighteenth century, these rituals disappeared, at least from the travelogues.

Walter Scott was the first author to argue in a leaflet on Walter Raleigh in 1806 that it was generally assumed that in Raleighs time there was no peace beyond the line.

In short, it is quite interesting to note that initially the line once indicated a political, juridical or military category defining a maritime space of commercial and mercantile law understood or claimed as mare liberum . However, this claim never corresponded with reality. In the twentieth century the line definitely refers to the equator and had become a legal and, additionally, racial and civilisational category defining the Wests legal differences with respect to labour and civic rights. Today nobody speaks of the line and many present-day contemporaries have forgotten its existence as well as the meaning of the phrase. But the line is still there though not explicitly referred to. For exampleand one example may suffice at this pointwhen Western media or politicians of the G8 speak of the Global South, they roughly denominate what were termed developing countries during the second half of the twentieth century, all of which were former colonies or countries indirectly ruled by European or imperial(ist) powers. And of course, the Global South is a zone where things are entirely different.