The right of transit passage in straits and the analogous right of archipelagic sealanes passage in archipelagic states, negotiated in the 1970s and embodied in the 1982 UNCLOS, sought to approximate the freedom of navigation and overflight while expressly recognising the sovereignty or jurisdiction of the coastal state over the waters concerned. However, the allocation of rights and duties of the coastal state and third states is open to interpretation. Recent developments in state practice, such as Australia's requirement of compulsory pilotage in the Torres Strait, the bridge across the Great Belt and the proposals for a bridge across the Strait of Messina, the enhanced environmental standards applicable in the Strait of Bonifacio and Canada's claims over the Arctic Route, make it necessary to reassess the whole common law of straits. The Legal Regime of Straits examines the complex relationship between the coastal state and the international community.

This wide-ranging, geographically ambitious book tells the story of the Arab diaspora within the context of British and Dutch colonialism, unpacking the community's ambiguous embrace of European colonial authority in Southeast Asia. In Fluid Jurisdictions, Nurfadzilah Yahaya looks at colonial legal infrastructure and discusses how it impacted, and was impacted by, Islam and ethnicity. But more important, she follows the actors who used this framework to advance their particular interests. Yahaya explains why Arab minorities in the region helped to fuel the entrenchment of European colonial legalities: their itinerant lives made institutional records necessary. Securely stored in centralized repositories, such records could be presented as evidence in legal disputes. To ensure accountability down the line, Arab merchants valued notarial attestation land deeds, inheritance papers, and marriage certificates by recognized state officials. Colonial subjects continually played one jurisdiction against another, sometimes preferring that colonial legal authorities administer Islamic law—even against fellow Muslims. Fluid Jurisdictions draws on lively material from multiple international archives to demonstrate the interplay between colonial projections of order and their realities, Arab navigation of legally plural systems in Southeast Asia and beyond, and the fraught and deeply human struggles that played out between family, religious, contract, and commercial legal orders.

This is an innovative study of how British Colonial rule and society in Malayan towns and plantations transformed immigrants into British subjects.

This comparative study of piracy and maritime violence provides a fresh understanding of European overseas expansion and colonisation in Asia. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.