The Invention of the Continental Shelf: Foreshores and Minerals under the Sea around Cornwall [1854] – an Arbitration between The Crown and The Duchy of Cornwall

The extension of coastal state sovereign rights over the sea and seabed up to 200 nautical miles was a seismic change in global order. It nearly doubled the amount of the globe subject to state sovereignty, an equivalent change in geopolitics to that of European colonialism. This article searches for the origin of this fundamental change, going back to the first international lawyers to write about the continental shelf, and following where they found historical precedent. I find the origin of the continental shelf in a mid-19th century dispute between the British Crown and the Duchy of Cornwall, over tin mines in that county. In this dispute the legal arguments and conceptual innovations needed for the continental shelf are invented. These innovations allowed for the extension of territory and sovereignty out to sea for the first time in a way which is familiar today. The invention of the continental shelf required nothing less than to fundamentally change how territory and sovereignty are understood.