A Search for Sovereignty examines how European imperial powers imagined imperial space, constructing sovereignty in ways that merged geographic discourse with law.

1. Introduction: anomalies of empire; 2. Treacherous places: Atlantic riverine regions and the law of treason; 3. Sovereignty at sea: jurisdiction, piracy, and ocean regionalism; 4. Island chains: military law and convict transportation; 5. Landlocked: colonial enclaves and the problem of quasi-sovereignty; 6. Conclusion: bare sovereignty and empire.

Lauren Benton is Professor of History and Affiliate Professor of Law at New York University. Her book Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400-1900 (Cambridge, 2002) won the Law and Society Association's James Willard Hurst Book Prize, the World History Association Book Prize, and the PEWS Book Award from the American Sociological Association, Political Economy of the World Systems Section.